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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 "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          9th March 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
  32 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
  33 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
  34 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
  35 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
  36 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
  37 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
  38 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
  39 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
  40 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
  41 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
  42 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
  43 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
  44 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
  45
  46 <p>The list of NUUG videos
  47 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
  48 include things like a
  49 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
  50 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
  51 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
  52 re-implementation</a>, the
  53 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
  54 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
  55 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
  56 video</A> and many others.</p>
  57
  58 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
  59 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
  60 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
  61 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
  62 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
  63 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
  64 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
  65 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
  66 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
  67 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
  68
  69 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
  70 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
  71 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
  72 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
  73 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
  74 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
  75 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
  76 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
  77 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
  78 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
  79
  80       </div>
  81       <div class="tags">
  82
  83
  84         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
  85
  86
  87       </div>
  88     </div>
  89     <div class="padding"></div>
  90
  91     <div class="entry">
  92       <div class="title">
  93         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
  94       </div>
  95       <div class="date">
  96         28th February 2015
  97       </div>
  98       <div class="body">
  99         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
 100 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
 101 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
 102 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
 103 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
 104 made for
 105 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
 106 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
 107 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
 108 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
 109 a friend have
 110 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
 111 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
 112 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
 113 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
 114 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
 115 it happen ourselves.
 116 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
 117 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
 118 is.</p>
 119
 120 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
 121 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
 122
 123       </div>
 124       <div class="tags">
 125
 126
 127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 128
 129
 130       </div>
 131     </div>
 132     <div class="padding"></div>
 133
 134     <div class="entry">
 135       <div class="title">
 136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
 137       </div>
 138       <div class="date">
 139         25th February 2015
 140       </div>
 141       <div class="body">
 142         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
 143 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
 144 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
 145 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
 146 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
 147 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
 148 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
 149 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
 150 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
 151 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
 152 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
 153 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
 154 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
 155 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
 156 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
 157 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
 158 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
 159
 160 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
 161 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
 162 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
 163 with VLC.</p>
 164
 165 <ul>
 166   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
 167   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
 168 </ul>
 169
 170 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
 171 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
 172 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
 173 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
 174 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
 175 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
 176 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
 177
 178 <blockquote><pre>
 179 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
 180  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
 181  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
 182 </pre></blockquote>
 183
 184 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
 185 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
 186 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
 187 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
 188
 189       </div>
 190       <div class="tags">
 191
 192
 193         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 194
 195
 196       </div>
 197     </div>
 198     <div class="padding"></div>
 199
 200     <div class="entry">
 201       <div class="title">
 202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
 203       </div>
 204       <div class="date">
 205         10th February 2015
 206       </div>
 207       <div class="body">
 208         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
 209 that
 210 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
 211 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
 212 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
 213 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
 214 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
 215 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
 216 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
 217 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
 218 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
 219 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
 220 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
 221 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
 222 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
 223 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
 224 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
 225
 226 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
 227 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
 228 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
 229 controversy about these scanners.</p>
 230
 231 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
 232 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
 233 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
 234
 235       </div>
 236       <div class="tags">
 237
 238
 239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
 240
 241
 242       </div>
 243     </div>
 244     <div class="padding"></div>
 245
 246     <div class="entry">
 247       <div class="title">
 248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
 249       </div>
 250       <div class="date">
 251          8th February 2015
 252       </div>
 253       <div class="body">
 254         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
 255 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
 256 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
 257 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
 258 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
 259 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
 260 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
 261 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
 262 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
 263 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
 264 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
 265 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
 266
 267 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
 268 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
 269 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
 270 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
 271
 272 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
 273 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
 274 distribute the TV content.  The
 275 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
 276 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
 277 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
 278 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
 279 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
 280 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
 281 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
 282 following activity, we now have the schedule
 283 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
 284 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
 285 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
 286 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
 287
 288 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
 289 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
 290 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
 291 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
 292 streams are working as they should.</p>
 293
 294       </div>
 295       <div class="tags">
 296
 297
 298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 299
 300
 301       </div>
 302     </div>
 303     <div class="padding"></div>
 304
 305     <div class="entry">
 306       <div class="title">
 307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
 308       </div>
 309       <div class="date">
 310         12th January 2015
 311       </div>
 312       <div class="body">
 313         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
 314 Foundation</a> announced a new video
 315 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
 316 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
 317 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
 318 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
 319 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
 320 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
 321
 322 <p>But today I was told that
 323 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
 324 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
 325 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
 326 available in
 327 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
 328 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
 329 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
 330
 331 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
 332 Libreplanet
 333 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
 334 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
 335
 336       </div>
 337       <div class="tags">
 338
 339
 340         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 341
 342
 343       </div>
 344     </div>
 345     <div class="padding"></div>
 346
 347     <div class="entry">
 348       <div class="title">
 349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
 350       </div>
 351       <div class="date">
 352         30th December 2014
 353       </div>
 354       <div class="body">
 355         <p>I am very happy that we in the
 356 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
 357 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
 358 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
 359 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
 360 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
 361 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
 362 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
 363 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
 364 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
 365 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
 366
 367 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
 368 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
 369 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
 370 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
 371 reports in public.</p>
 372
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="tags">
 375
 376
 377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 378
 379
 380       </div>
 381     </div>
 382     <div class="padding"></div>
 383
 384     <div class="entry">
 385       <div class="title">
 386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
 387       </div>
 388       <div class="date">
 389         19th December 2014
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="body">
 392         <p>So, Sony caved in
 393 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
 394 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
 395 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
 396 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
 397 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
 398 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
 399 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
 400 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
 401 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
 402 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
 403 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
 404 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
 405 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
 406
 407 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
 408 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
 409 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
 410 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
 411
 412 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
 413 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
 414 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
 415 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
 416 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
 417 income. :)</p>
 418
 419       </div>
 420       <div class="tags">
 421
 422
 423         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 424
 425
 426       </div>
 427     </div>
 428     <div class="padding"></div>
 429
 430     <div class="entry">
 431       <div class="title">
 432         <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>
 433       </div>
 434       <div class="date">
 435         22nd November 2014
 436       </div>
 437       <div class="body">
 438         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 439 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 440 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 441 courtesy of
 442 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 443 Schubert</a> and
 444 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 445 McVittie</a>.
 446
 447 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 448 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 449 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 450 you upgrade:</p>
 451
 452 <p><blockquote><pre>
 453 Package: systemd-sysv
 454 Pin: release o=Debian
 455 Pin-Priority: -1
 456 </pre></blockquote><p>
 457
 458 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 459 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 460 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 461 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 462 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 463
 464 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 465 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 466 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 467 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 468 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 469 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 470
 471 <p><blockquote><pre>
 472 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 473 </pre></blockquote><p>
 474
 475 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 476
 477 <p><blockquote><pre>
 478 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 479 </pre></blockquote><p>
 480
 481 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 482 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 483
 484 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 485 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 486 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 487 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 488 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 489 Jessie is released.</p>
 490
 491 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 492 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 493 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 494 line.</p>
 495
 496       </div>
 497       <div class="tags">
 498
 499
 500         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>.
 501
 502
 503       </div>
 504     </div>
 505     <div class="padding"></div>
 506
 507     <div class="entry">
 508       <div class="title">
 509         <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>
 510       </div>
 511       <div class="date">
 512         10th November 2014
 513       </div>
 514       <div class="body">
 515         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 516 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 517 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 518
 519 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 520 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 521 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 522 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 523 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 524 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 525 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 526 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 527 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 528 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 529 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 530 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 531 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 532 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 533 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 534
 535 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 536 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 537 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 538 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 539 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 540 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 541 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 542 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 543 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 544 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 545 were fairly easy, and
 546 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 547 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 548 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 549 useful approach.</p>
 550
 551 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 552 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 553 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 554 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 555 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 556 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 557 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 558 this:</p>
 559
 560 <p><blockquote><pre>
 561 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 562   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 563 </pre></blockquote></p>
 564
 565 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 566 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 567
 568 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 569 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 570 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 571 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 572 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 573 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 574 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 575 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 576 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 577 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 578 system.</p>
 579
 580 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 581 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 582 SMTorP. :)</p>
 583
 584       </div>
 585       <div class="tags">
 586
 587
 588         Tags: <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>.
 589
 590
 591       </div>
 592     </div>
 593     <div class="padding"></div>
 594
 595     <div class="entry">
 596       <div class="title">
 597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
 598       </div>
 599       <div class="date">
 600         27th October 2014
 601       </div>
 602       <div class="body">
 603         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
 604 sent out
 605 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
 606 announcement</a>:</p>
 607
 608 <pre>
 609 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
 610 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
 611
 612 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
 613 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
 614 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
 615 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
 616 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
 617 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
 618 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
 619
 620 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
 621 installation instructions are available, including detailed
 622 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
 623 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
 624 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
 625 of at least 5 characters!
 626
 627  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
 628
 629 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
 630 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
 631 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
 632 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
 633 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
 634
 635 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
 636 mostly in Germany and Norway.
 637
 638 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
 639 ===============================
 640
 641 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
 642 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 643 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 644 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 645 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 646 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 647 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 648 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
 649 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 650 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 651 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 652 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
 653 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
 654 environment.
 655
 656  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
 657  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
 658
 659 Full release notes and manual
 660 =============================
 661
 662 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
 663 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
 664 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
 665 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
 666 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
 667
 668  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
 669  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
 670
 671 Where to get it
 672 ---------------
 673
 674 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
 675
 676  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 677  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
 678  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
 679
 680 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
 681
 682 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
 683 ===============================================================================
 684
 685
 686 Installation changes
 687 --------------------
 688
 689  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
 690
 691 Software updates
 692 ----------------
 693
 694 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
 695
 696  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
 697  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
 698    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
 699    choose one of the others see manual.)
 700  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
 701  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
 702  * GOsa 2.7.4
 703  * LTSP 5.5.4
 704  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
 705  * new boot framework: systemd
 706  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
 707  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
 708  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
 709  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
 710  * golearn 0.9
 711  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
 712  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
 713  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
 714    installation.
 715  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
 716    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
 717
 718  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
 719  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
 720
 721 Fixed bugs
 722 ----------
 723
 724  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
 725    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
 726    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
 727  * and many others.
 728
 729 Documentation and translation updates
 730 -------------------------------------
 731
 732  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
 733    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
 734    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
 735
 736 Other changes
 737 -------------
 738
 739  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
 740    server takes more time.
 741  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
 742    doesn't work.
 743
 744 Regressions / known problems
 745 ----------------------------
 746
 747  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
 748    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
 749    and Debian bug #762103).
 750  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
 751    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
 752  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
 753    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
 754    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
 755
 756 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
 757
 758  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
 759
 760 How to report bugs
 761 ------------------
 762
 763 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
 764
 765 About Debian
 766 ============
 767
 768 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
 769 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
 770 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
 771 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
 772 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
 773 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
 774 operating system.
 775
 776 Contact Information
 777 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
 778 mail to press@debian.org.
 779
 780  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
 781 </pre>
 782
 783       </div>
 784       <div class="tags">
 785
 786
 787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 788
 789
 790       </div>
 791     </div>
 792     <div class="padding"></div>
 793
 794     <div class="entry">
 795       <div class="title">
 796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
 797       </div>
 798       <div class="date">
 799         23rd October 2014
 800       </div>
 801       <div class="body">
 802         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
 803 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
 804 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
 805 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
 806 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
 807 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
 808 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
 809 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
 810 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
 811 live.</p>
 812
 813 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
 814 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
 815 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
 816 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
 817 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
 818 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
 819 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
 820 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
 821
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="tags">
 824
 825
 826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 827
 828
 829       </div>
 830     </div>
 831     <div class="padding"></div>
 832
 833     <div class="entry">
 834       <div class="title">
 835         <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>
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="date">
 838         22nd October 2014
 839       </div>
 840       <div class="body">
 841         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 842 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 843 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 844 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 845 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 846 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 847 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 848 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 849 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 850 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 851 lists I recently took over:</p>
 852
 853 <p><blockquote><pre>
 854 % time listadmin xiph
 855 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 856 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 857
 858 real    0m1.709s
 859 user    0m0.232s
 860 sys     0m0.012s
 861 %
 862 </pre></blockquote></p>
 863
 864 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 865 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 866 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 867 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 868 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 869 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 870 program.</p>
 871
 872 <p>If you install
 873 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 874 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 875 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 876
 877 <p><blockquote><pre>
 878 username username@example.org
 879 spamlevel 23
 880 default discard
 881 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 882
 883 password secret
 884 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 885 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 886
 887 password hidden
 888 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 889 </pre></blockquote></p>
 890
 891 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 892 learn the details.</p>
 893
 894 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 895 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 896 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 897 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 898
 899 <p><blockquote><pre>
 900 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 901 </pre></blockquote></p>
 902
 903 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 904 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 905 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 906 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 907 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 908 email.</p>
 909
 910 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 911 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 912 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 913 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 914 software.</p>
 915
 916 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 917 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 918 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 919
 920 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 921 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 922 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 923 sure why.</p>
 924
 925       </div>
 926       <div class="tags">
 927
 928
 929         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 930
 931
 932       </div>
 933     </div>
 934     <div class="padding"></div>
 935
 936     <div class="entry">
 937       <div class="title">
 938         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 939       </div>
 940       <div class="date">
 941         17th October 2014
 942       </div>
 943       <div class="body">
 944         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 945 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 946 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 947 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 948 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 949 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 950 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 951
 952 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 953 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 954 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 955 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 956 of this story.)</p>
 957
 958 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 959 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 960 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 961 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 962 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 963 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 964 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 965 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 966 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 967 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 968
 969 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 970 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 971 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 972 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 973
 974 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 975 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 976
 977 <p><blockquote><pre>
 978 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 979 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 980 </pre></blockquote></p>
 981
 982 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 983 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 984 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 985 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 986 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 987 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 988 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 989 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 990
 991 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 992 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 993
 994 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 995 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 996 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 997 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 998 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 999
1000 <p><blockquote><pre>
1001 Task: isenkram-packages
1002 Section: hardware
1003 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1004  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1005  proposed.
1006 Test-new-install: show show
1007 Relevance: 8
1008 Packages: for-current-hardware
1009
1010 Task: isenkram-firmware
1011 Section: hardware
1012 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1013  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1014  packages are proposed.
1015 Test-new-install: mark show
1016 Relevance: 8
1017 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1018 </pre></blockquote></p>
1019
1020 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1021 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1022 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1023 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1024 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1025
1026 <p><blockquote><pre>
1027 #!/bin/sh
1028 #
1029 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1030 export PATH
1031 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1032 </pre></blockquote></p>
1033
1034 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1035 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1036
1037 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1038 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1039 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1040 install.</p>
1041
1042 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1043 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1044 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1045
1046       </div>
1047       <div class="tags">
1048
1049
1050         Tags: <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>.
1051
1052
1053       </div>
1054     </div>
1055     <div class="padding"></div>
1056
1057     <div class="entry">
1058       <div class="title">
1059         <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>
1060       </div>
1061       <div class="date">
1062          4th October 2014
1063       </div>
1064       <div class="body">
1065         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1066 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1067 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1068 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1069
1070 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1071
1072 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1073 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1074 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1075
1076       </div>
1077       <div class="tags">
1078
1079
1080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1081
1082
1083       </div>
1084     </div>
1085     <div class="padding"></div>
1086
1087     <div class="entry">
1088       <div class="title">
1089         <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>
1090       </div>
1091       <div class="date">
1092          4th October 2014
1093       </div>
1094       <div class="body">
1095         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1096 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1097 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1098 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1099 Dibb.</p>
1100
1101 <p>I just wrapped up
1102 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1103 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1104 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1105 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1106 0.17.</p>
1107
1108 <ul>
1109
1110  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1111  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1112    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1113  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1114  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1115  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1116  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1117  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1118  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1119    the palette size is the same.</li>
1120  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1121  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1122  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1123  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1124    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1125
1126 </ul>
1127
1128 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1129 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1130 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1131
1132       </div>
1133       <div class="tags">
1134
1135
1136         Tags: <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>.
1137
1138
1139       </div>
1140     </div>
1141     <div class="padding"></div>
1142
1143     <div class="entry">
1144       <div class="title">
1145         <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>
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="date">
1148         26th September 2014
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="body">
1151         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1152 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1153 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1154 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1155 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1156 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1157 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1158 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1159 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1160 future.  The
1161 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1162 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1163 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1164 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1165 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1166
1167 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1168 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1169 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1170 or rsync (use
1171 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1172 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1173 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1174 install with some tweaking.</p>
1175
1176 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1177 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1178
1179 <p><blockquote><pre>
1180 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1181 </pre></blockquote></p>
1182
1183 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1184 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1185 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1186 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1187
1188 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1189 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1190 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1191 your need.</p>
1192
1193 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1194 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1195 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1196 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1197 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1198 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1199 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1200 days.</p>
1201
1202 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1203 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1204 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1205 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1206 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1207 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1208 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1209 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1210 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1211
1212 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1213 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1214 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1215
1216       </div>
1217       <div class="tags">
1218
1219
1220         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>.
1221
1222
1223       </div>
1224     </div>
1225     <div class="padding"></div>
1226
1227     <div class="entry">
1228       <div class="title">
1229         <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>
1230       </div>
1231       <div class="date">
1232         25th September 2014
1233       </div>
1234       <div class="body">
1235         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1236 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1237 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1238 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1239 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1240 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1241 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1242 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1243 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1244 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1245 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1246 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1247 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1248
1249 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1250 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1251 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1252 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1253 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1254 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1255 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1256 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1257 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1258 list</a>. :)</p>
1259
1260       </div>
1261       <div class="tags">
1262
1263
1264         Tags: <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>.
1265
1266
1267       </div>
1268     </div>
1269     <div class="padding"></div>
1270
1271     <div class="entry">
1272       <div class="title">
1273         <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>
1274       </div>
1275       <div class="date">
1276         16th September 2014
1277       </div>
1278       <div class="body">
1279         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1280 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1281 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1282 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1283 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1284 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1285 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1286 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1287 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1288 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1289 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1290 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1291 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1292 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1293
1294 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1295 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1296 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1297 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1298 depend on the small and clever package
1299 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1300 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1301 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1302 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1303 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1304 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1305 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1306 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1307 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1308 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1309 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1310
1311 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1312 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1313 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1314 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1315 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1316 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1317 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1318 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1319 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1320 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1321 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1322 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1323 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1324 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1325 dialog.</p>
1326
1327 <p><table>
1328
1329 <tr>
1330 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1331 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1332 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1333 <th>Reduction</th>
1334 </tr>
1335
1336 <tr>
1337 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1338 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1339 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1340 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1341 </tr>
1342
1343 <tr>
1344 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1345 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1346 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1347 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1348 </tr>
1349
1350 <tr>
1351 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1352 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1353 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1354 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1355 </tr>
1356
1357 <tr>
1358 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1359 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1360 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1361 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1362 </tr>
1363
1364 <tr>
1365 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1366 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1367 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1368 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1369 </tr>
1370
1371 </table></p>
1372
1373 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1374 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1375 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1376 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1377 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1378 installed.</p>
1379
1380 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1381 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1382 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1383 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1384 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1385 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1386 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1387 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1388 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1389 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1390 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1391 for the entire installation.</p>
1392
1393 <p>I've implemented this in the
1394 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1395 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1396 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1397 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1398 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1399
1400 <p><blockquote><pre>
1401 #!/bin/sh
1402 set -e
1403 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1404 info() {
1405     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1406 }
1407 error() {
1408     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1409 }
1410 override_install() {
1411     apt-install eatmydata || true
1412     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1413         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1414             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1415             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1416             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1417                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1418                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1419                     > /target$file.edu
1420                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1421                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1422                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1423                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1424             else
1425                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1426             fi
1427         done
1428     else
1429         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1430     fi
1431 }
1432
1433 override_install
1434 </pre></blockquote></p>
1435
1436 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1437 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1438
1439 <p><blockquote><pre>
1440 #! /bin/sh -e
1441 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1442 error() {
1443     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1444 }
1445 remove_install_override() {
1446     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1447         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1448         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1449             rm /target$file
1450             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1451                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1452             rm /target$file.edu
1453         else
1454             error "Missing divert for $file."
1455         fi
1456     done
1457     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1458 }
1459
1460 remove_install_override
1461 </pre></blockquote></p>
1462
1463 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1464 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1465 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1466
1467 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1468 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1469 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1470 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1471 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1472 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1473 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1474 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1475 everyone.</p>
1476
1477 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1478 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1479 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1480 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1481
1482 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1483 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1484 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1485 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1486 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1487
1488 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1489 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1490 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1491 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1492 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1493
1494       </div>
1495       <div class="tags">
1496
1497
1498         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>.
1499
1500
1501       </div>
1502     </div>
1503     <div class="padding"></div>
1504
1505     <div class="entry">
1506       <div class="title">
1507         <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>
1508       </div>
1509       <div class="date">
1510         10th September 2014
1511       </div>
1512       <div class="body">
1513         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1514 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1515 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1516 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1517 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1518 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1519 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1520 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1521 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1522 those problems are gone now.</p>
1523
1524 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1525 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1526 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1527 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1528 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1529
1530 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1531 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1532 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1533
1534 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1535 line:</p>
1536
1537 <p><blockquote><pre>
1538 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1539 </pre></blockquote></p>
1540
1541 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1542 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1543 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1544 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1545
1546 <p><blockquote><pre>
1547 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1548 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1549 %
1550 </pre></blockquote></p>
1551
1552 <p>Now if only
1553 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1554 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1555 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1556 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1557 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1558 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1559 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1560 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1561 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1562
1563       </div>
1564       <div class="tags">
1565
1566
1567         Tags: <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>.
1568
1569
1570       </div>
1571     </div>
1572     <div class="padding"></div>
1573
1574     <div class="entry">
1575       <div class="title">
1576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
1577       </div>
1578       <div class="date">
1579         25th August 2014
1580       </div>
1581       <div class="body">
1582         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
1583 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
1584 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
1585 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
1586 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
1587 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
1588 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
1589 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
1590 am not sure.
1591 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
1592 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
1593 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
1594 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
1595 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
1596 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
1597 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
1598 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
1599 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
1600 licenses are.</p>
1601
1602 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
1603 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
1604 end user</a>
1605 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
1606 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
1607
1608 <p><blockquote>
1609 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
1610 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
1611
1612 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
1613 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
1614 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
1615 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
1616 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
1617 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
1618 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
1619 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
1620 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
1621 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
1622 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
1623 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
1624 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
1625 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
1626 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
1627 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
1628 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
1629 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
1630
1631 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
1632 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
1633
1634 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1635 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
1636 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
1637 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
1638 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
1639 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
1640 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
1641 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1642 </blockquote></p>
1643
1644 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
1645 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
1646
1647 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
1648 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
1649
1650 <p><blockquote>
1651
1652 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
1653 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
1654 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
1655 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
1656 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
1657 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
1658 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
1659 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
1660 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
1661 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
1662 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
1663 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
1664
1665 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
1666 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
1667 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
1668 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
1669 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
1670 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
1671 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
1672 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
1673 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
1674 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
1675 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
1676 additional details.</p>
1677
1678 </blockquote></p>
1679
1680 <p>Some free software like
1681 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
1682 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
1683 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
1684 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
1685
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="tags">
1688
1689
1690         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1691
1692
1693       </div>
1694     </div>
1695     <div class="padding"></div>
1696
1697     <div class="entry">
1698       <div class="title">
1699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
1700       </div>
1701       <div class="date">
1702         31st July 2014
1703       </div>
1704       <div class="body">
1705         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1706 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1707 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1708 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1709 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1710 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
1711
1712 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1713
1714 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1715 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
1716 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
1717 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1718 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1719 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1720 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1721 works with Windows . :-(</p>
1722
1723 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1724 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
1725 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
1726 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1727 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1728 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
1729
1730 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1731 project?</strong></p>
1732
1733 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1734 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1735 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1736 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1737 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1738 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
1739 with this job.</p>
1740
1741 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1742 Edu?</strong></p>
1743
1744 <p>The independence.</p>
1745
1746 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1747 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1748 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
1749
1750 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1751 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
1752 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1753 working reliable. </p>
1754
1755 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
1756 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1757 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
1758 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
1759 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1760 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1761 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1762 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
1763
1764 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1765 Edu?</strong></p>
1766
1767 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
1768 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
1769 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
1770
1771 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1772
1773 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
1774 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
1775
1776 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1777 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1778
1779 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1780 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1781 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1782 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1783 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1784 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
1785 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
1786
1787       </div>
1788       <div class="tags">
1789
1790
1791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1792
1793
1794       </div>
1795     </div>
1796     <div class="padding"></div>
1797
1798     <div class="entry">
1799       <div class="title">
1800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
1801       </div>
1802       <div class="date">
1803         23rd July 2014
1804       </div>
1805       <div class="body">
1806         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
1807 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1808 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1809 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
1810 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
1811 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
1812 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
1813 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
1814 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
1815 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
1816 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
1817 the translation show this very well:</p>
1818
1819 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1820
1821 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
1822 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1823 project pages and the
1824 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1825 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1826 and HTML version available in the
1827 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1828 directory</a>.</p>
1829
1830 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1831 you find any.</p>
1832
1833       </div>
1834       <div class="tags">
1835
1836
1837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1838
1839
1840       </div>
1841     </div>
1842     <div class="padding"></div>
1843
1844     <div class="entry">
1845       <div class="title">
1846         <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>
1847       </div>
1848       <div class="date">
1849         17th June 2014
1850       </div>
1851       <div class="body">
1852         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1853 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1854 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1855 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1856 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1857
1858 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1859 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1860 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1861 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1862 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1863 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1864 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1865 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1866 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1867 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1868 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1869 goals.</p>
1870
1871 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1872 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1873 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1874 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1875 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1876 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1877 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1878 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1879 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1880 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1881 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1882 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1883 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1884 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1885 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1886 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1887 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1888 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1889 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1890 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1891 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1892 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1893 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1894 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1895
1896 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1897 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1898 track the English original.  For this we use the
1899 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1900 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1901 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1902 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1903 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1904 files), which the translations update with the native language
1905 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1906 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1907 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1908 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1909 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1910 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1911 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1912 of the documentation.</p>
1913
1914 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1915 recommend using
1916 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1917 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1918 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1919 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1920 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1921 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1922 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1923 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1924
1925 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1926 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1927 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1928 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1929 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1930 translated images by storing translated versions in
1931 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1932 package maintainers know more.</p>
1933
1934 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1935 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1936 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1937 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1938 PDF version</a> or the
1939 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1940 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1941 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1942
1943 <p>To learn more, check out
1944 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1945 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1946 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1947 manual on the wiki</a> and
1948 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1949 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1950
1951       </div>
1952       <div class="tags">
1953
1954
1955         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>.
1956
1957
1958       </div>
1959     </div>
1960     <div class="padding"></div>
1961
1962     <div class="entry">
1963       <div class="title">
1964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
1965       </div>
1966       <div class="date">
1967         29th May 2014
1968       </div>
1969       <div class="body">
1970         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
1971 in my car, connected to
1972 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
1973 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
1974 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
1975 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
1976 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
1977 such car computer.</p>
1978
1979 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
1980
1981 <ul>
1982
1983  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
1984
1985  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
1986    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
1987    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
1988    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
1989    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
1990
1991  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
1992    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
1993    route.</li>
1994
1995  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
1996
1997  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
1998    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
1999    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
2000    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
2001    connection do not work.</li>
2002
2003  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
2004    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
2005
2006  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
2007    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
2008
2009  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
2010    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
2011
2012 </ul>
2013
2014 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
2015 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
2016
2017       </div>
2018       <div class="tags">
2019
2020
2021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2022
2023
2024       </div>
2025     </div>
2026     <div class="padding"></div>
2027
2028     <div class="entry">
2029       <div class="title">
2030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
2031       </div>
2032       <div class="date">
2033         29th April 2014
2034       </div>
2035       <div class="body">
2036         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
2037 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
2038 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
2039 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
2040 newer AVM2 format - see
2041 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
2042 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
2043 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
2044 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
2045 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
2046 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
2047 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
2048 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
2049 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
2050 sites do not work yet.</p>
2051
2052 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
2053 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
2054 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
2055 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
2056 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
2057 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
2058 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
2059 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
2060 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
2061 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
2062 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
2063
2064 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
2065 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
2066 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
2067 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
2068 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
2069 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
2070 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
2071
2072 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
2073 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
2074 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
2075 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
2076 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
2077
2078       </div>
2079       <div class="tags">
2080
2081
2082         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2083
2084
2085       </div>
2086     </div>
2087     <div class="padding"></div>
2088
2089     <div class="entry">
2090       <div class="title">
2091         <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>
2092       </div>
2093       <div class="date">
2094         23rd April 2014
2095       </div>
2096       <div class="body">
2097         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2098 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2099 So I implemented one, using
2100 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2101 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2102 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2103 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2104 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2105 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2106
2107 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2108 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2109 packages to install.  The first part is in
2110 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2111 this:</p>
2112
2113 <p><blockquote><pre>
2114 Task: isenkram
2115 Section: hardware
2116 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2117  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2118  proposed.
2119 Test-new-install: mark show
2120 Relevance: 8
2121 Packages: for-current-hardware
2122 </pre></blockquote></p>
2123
2124 <p>The second part is in
2125 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2126 this:</p>
2127
2128 <p><blockquote><pre>
2129 #!/bin/sh
2130 #
2131 (
2132     isenkram-lookup
2133     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2134 ) | sort -u
2135 </pre></blockquote></p>
2136
2137 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2138 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2139 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2140 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2141 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2142 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2143
2144 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2145 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2146 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2147 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2148 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2149 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2150 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2151 the python-apt code (bug
2152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2153 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2154 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2155 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2156 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2157 unstable today.</p>
2158
2159 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2160 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2161 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2162 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2163 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2164 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2165 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2166 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2167 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2168
2169 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2170 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2171 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2172 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2173 package.  See also
2174 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2175 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2176 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2177 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2178
2179       </div>
2180       <div class="tags">
2181
2182
2183         Tags: <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>.
2184
2185
2186       </div>
2187     </div>
2188     <div class="padding"></div>
2189
2190     <div class="entry">
2191       <div class="title">
2192         <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>
2193       </div>
2194       <div class="date">
2195         15th April 2014
2196       </div>
2197       <div class="body">
2198         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2199 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2200 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2201 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2202 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2203 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2204
2205 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2206 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2207 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2208 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2209 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2210 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2211 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2212
2213 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2214 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2215 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2216 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2217 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2218 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2219 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2220 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2221 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2222 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2223 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2224 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2225
2226 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2227 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2228 become root:</p>
2229
2230 <p><pre>
2231 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2232   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2233   u-boot-tools
2234 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2235   freedom-maker
2236 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2237 </pre></p>
2238
2239 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2240 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2241 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2242 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2243 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2244 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2245 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2246 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2247
2248 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2249 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2250 the preseed values:</p>
2251
2252 <p><pre>
2253 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2254 </pre></p>
2255
2256 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2257 it still work.</p>
2258
2259 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2260 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2261 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2262 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2263 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2264 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2265 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2266
2267 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2268 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2269 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2270 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2271 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2272 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2273
2274       </div>
2275       <div class="tags">
2276
2277
2278         Tags: <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>.
2279
2280
2281       </div>
2282     </div>
2283     <div class="padding"></div>
2284
2285     <div class="entry">
2286       <div class="title">
2287         <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>
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="date">
2290          9th April 2014
2291       </div>
2292       <div class="body">
2293         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2294 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2295 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2296 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2297 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2298 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2299 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2300 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2301 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2302 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2303 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2304 have looked at a system called
2305 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2306 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2307
2308 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2309 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2310 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2311 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2312 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2313 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2314 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2315 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2316 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2317 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2318 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2319 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2320 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2321
2322 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2323 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2324 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2325 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2326 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2327 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2328 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2329 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2330 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2331 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2332 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2333 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2334 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2335 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2336 account.</p>
2337
2338 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2339 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2340 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2341 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2342 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2343 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2344 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2345
2346 <p><blockquote><pre>
2347 [s3c]
2348 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2349 backend-login: API-login
2350 backend-password: API-password
2351 fs-passphrase: local-password
2352 </pre></blockquote></p>
2353
2354 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2355 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2356 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2357 details and password to create it:</p>
2358
2359 <p><blockquote><pre>
2360 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2361 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2362   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2363 Enter backend login:
2364 Enter backend password:
2365 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2366 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2367 Enter encryption password:
2368 Confirm encryption password:
2369 Generating random encryption key...
2370 Creating metadata tables...
2371 Dumping metadata...
2372 ..objects..
2373 ..blocks..
2374 ..inodes..
2375 ..inode_blocks..
2376 ..symlink_targets..
2377 ..names..
2378 ..contents..
2379 ..ext_attributes..
2380 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2381 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2382 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2383
2384 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2385
2386 <p><blockquote><pre>
2387 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2388   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2389 Using 4 upload threads.
2390 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2391 Reading metadata...
2392 ..objects..
2393 ..blocks..
2394 ..inodes..
2395 ..inode_blocks..
2396 ..symlink_targets..
2397 ..names..
2398 ..contents..
2399 ..ext_attributes..
2400 Mounting filesystem...
2401 # df -h /s3ql
2402 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2403 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2404 #
2405 </pre></blockquote></p>
2406
2407 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2408 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2409 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2410 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2411 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2412 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2413
2414 <p><blockquote><pre>
2415 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2416 #
2417 </pre></blockquote></p>
2418
2419 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2420 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2421 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2422 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2423 file system:</p>
2424
2425 <p><blockquote><pre>
2426 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2427 Using cached metadata.
2428 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2429 Checking DB integrity...
2430 Creating temporary extra indices...
2431 Checking lost+found...
2432 Checking cached objects...
2433 Checking names (refcounts)...
2434 Checking contents (names)...
2435 Checking contents (inodes)...
2436 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2437 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2438 Checking objects (backend)...
2439 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2440 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2441 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2442 Checking objects (sizes)...
2443 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2444 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2445 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2446 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2447 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2448 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2449 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2450 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2451 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2452 Checking directory reachability...
2453 Checking unix conventions...
2454 Checking referential integrity...
2455 Dropping temporary indices...
2456 Backing up old metadata...
2457 Dumping metadata...
2458 ..objects..
2459 ..blocks..
2460 ..inodes..
2461 ..inode_blocks..
2462 ..symlink_targets..
2463 ..names..
2464 ..contents..
2465 ..ext_attributes..
2466 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2467 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2468 #
2469 </pre></blockquote></p>
2470
2471 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2472 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2473 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2474 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2475 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2476 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2477 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2478 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2479 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2480 working set.</p>
2481
2482 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2483 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2484 busy:</p>
2485
2486 <p><blockquote><pre>
2487 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2488   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2489 Using 8 upload threads.
2490 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2491 #
2492 </pre></blockquote></p>
2493
2494 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2495 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2496 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2497 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2498 s3qlctrl:
2499
2500 <p><blockquote><pre>
2501 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2502 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2503 #
2504 </pre></blockquote></p>
2505
2506 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2507 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2508 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2509 a report:</p>
2510
2511 <p><blockquote><pre>
2512 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2513 Directory entries:    9141
2514 Inodes:               9143
2515 Data blocks:          8851
2516 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2517 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2518 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2519 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2520 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2521 #
2522 </pre></blockquote></p>
2523
2524 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2525 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2526 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2527 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2528 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2529 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2530 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2531 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2532 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2533 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2534 best.</p>
2535
2536 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2537 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2538 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2539 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2540 poster is titled
2541 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2542 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2543 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2544 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2545 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2546
2547 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2548 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2549 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2550 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2552 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2553 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2554 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2555
2556 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2557 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2558 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2559 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2560 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2561 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2562 only read from it.</p>
2563
2564 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2565 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2566 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2567
2568       </div>
2569       <div class="tags">
2570
2571
2572         Tags: <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>.
2573
2574
2575       </div>
2576     </div>
2577     <div class="padding"></div>
2578
2579     <div class="entry">
2580       <div class="title">
2581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
2582       </div>
2583       <div class="date">
2584          1st April 2014
2585       </div>
2586       <div class="body">
2587         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
2588 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
2589 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
2590 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
2591 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
2592 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
2593 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
2594 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
2595 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
2596 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
2597 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
2598 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
2599 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
2600
2601 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
2602 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
2603 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
2604 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
2605 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
2606 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
2607 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
2608 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
2609 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
2610 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
2611 Linux.</p>
2612
2613 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
2614 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
2615 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
2616 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
2617 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
2618 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
2619 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
2620 Windows before metro).</p>
2621
2622 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
2623 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
2624 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
2625 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
2626 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
2627 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
2628 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
2629 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
2630 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
2631 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
2632 old Windows binaries, check it out by
2633 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
2634 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
2635 image.</p>
2636
2637       </div>
2638       <div class="tags">
2639
2640
2641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
2642
2643
2644       </div>
2645     </div>
2646     <div class="padding"></div>
2647
2648     <div class="entry">
2649       <div class="title">
2650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
2651       </div>
2652       <div class="date">
2653         30th March 2014
2654       </div>
2655       <div class="body">
2656         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2657 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
2658 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
2659 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
2660 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
2661
2662 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2663
2664 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
2665 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
2666 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
2667 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
2668 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
2669
2670 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
2671 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
2672 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
2673
2674 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
2675 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
2676 hunger.</p>
2677
2678 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2679 project?</strong></p>
2680
2681 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
2682 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
2683 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
2684 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
2685 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
2686 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
2687 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
2688 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
2689 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
2690 running.  I just loved it.</p>
2691
2692 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2693 Edu?</strong></p>
2694
2695 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
2696 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
2697 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
2698 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
2699 be made of steel.</p>
2700
2701 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2702 Edu?</strong></p>
2703
2704 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
2705
2706 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
2707 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
2708 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
2709 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
2710 or dropped.</p>
2711
2712 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
2713 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
2714 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
2715 discourage many people too.</p>
2716
2717 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2718
2719 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
2720 Virtualbox.</p>
2721
2722
2723 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2724 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2725
2726 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
2727 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
2728 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
2729 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
2730 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
2731 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
2732 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
2733 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
2734 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
2735
2736       </div>
2737       <div class="tags">
2738
2739
2740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2741
2742
2743       </div>
2744     </div>
2745     <div class="padding"></div>
2746
2747     <div class="entry">
2748       <div class="title">
2749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
2750       </div>
2751       <div class="date">
2752         25th March 2014
2753       </div>
2754       <div class="body">
2755         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
2756 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
2757 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
2758 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
2759 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
2760 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
2761 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
2762 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
2763 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
2764
2765 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
2766 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
2767 looked a given way.  Such
2768 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
2769 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
2770 called a
2771 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2772 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
2773 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
2774 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
2775 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
2776 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
2777 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
2778 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
2779 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
2780 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
2781 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
2782 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
2783 There are several commercial services around providing such
2784 timestamping.  A quick search for
2785 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
2786 service</a>" pointed me to at least
2787 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
2788 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
2789 Vadis</a>,
2790 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
2791 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
2792 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
2793 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
2794
2795 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
2796 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
2797 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
2798 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
2799 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
2800 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
2801 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
2802 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
2803 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
2804 Greifswald.</p>
2805
2806 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
2807 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
2808 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
2809 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
2810 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
2811
2812 <p><blockquote><pre>
2813 #!/bin/sh
2814 set -e
2815 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
2816 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
2817 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
2818 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
2819 cafile=chain.txt
2820 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
2821     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
2822 fi
2823 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
2824     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
2825 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
2826 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
2827 base64 < "$resfile"
2828 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
2829 </pre></blockquote></p>
2830
2831 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
2832 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
2833 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
2834 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
2835 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
2836 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
2837 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
2838 changed.</p>
2839
2840 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
2841 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
2842 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
2843 to set up?</p>
2844
2845       </div>
2846       <div class="tags">
2847
2848
2849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2850
2851
2852       </div>
2853     </div>
2854     <div class="padding"></div>
2855
2856     <div class="entry">
2857       <div class="title">
2858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
2859       </div>
2860       <div class="date">
2861         21st March 2014
2862       </div>
2863       <div class="body">
2864         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
2865 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
2866 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
2867 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
2868 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
2869 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
2870 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
2871
2872 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
2873 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
2874 tried using
2875 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
2876 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
2877 and program
2878 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
2879 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
2880 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
2881 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
2882 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
2883 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
2884 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
2885 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
2886 this method.</p>
2887
2888 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
2889 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
2890 problem is
2891 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
2892 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
2893 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
2894 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
2895 DVD structures, as the python library
2896 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
2897 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
2898 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
2899 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
2900 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
2901 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
2902
2903 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
2904 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
2905
2906       </div>
2907       <div class="tags">
2908
2909
2910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2911
2912
2913       </div>
2914     </div>
2915     <div class="padding"></div>
2916
2917     <div class="entry">
2918       <div class="title">
2919         <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>
2920       </div>
2921       <div class="date">
2922         14th March 2014
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="body">
2925         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2926 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2927 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2928 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2929 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2930 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2931 release (0.2).</p>
2932
2933 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2934 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2935 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2936 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2937 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2938 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2939 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2940 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2941 and build using
2942 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2943 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2944
2945 <pre>
2946 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2947   freedom-maker
2948 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2949   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2950   u-boot-tools
2951 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2952 </pre>
2953
2954 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2955 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2956 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2957 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2958 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2959 kpartx call.</p>
2960
2961 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2962 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2963 the preseed values:</p>
2964
2965 <pre>
2966 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2967 </pre>
2968
2969 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2970 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2971 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2972 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2973 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2974 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2975
2976 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2977 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2978 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2979 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2980 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2981 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2982
2983       </div>
2984       <div class="tags">
2985
2986
2987         Tags: <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>.
2988
2989
2990       </div>
2991     </div>
2992     <div class="padding"></div>
2993
2994     <div class="entry">
2995       <div class="title">
2996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2997       </div>
2998       <div class="date">
2999         12th March 2014
3000       </div>
3001       <div class="body">
3002         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
3003 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
3004 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
3005 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
3006 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
3007 document this better when one of the customers of
3008 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
3009 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
3010 get this working are the following:</p>
3011
3012 <p><ol>
3013
3014 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
3015 example host here.</li>
3016
3017 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
3018 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
3019
3020 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
3021 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
3022
3023 </ol></p>
3024
3025 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
3026 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
3027 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
3028 started).</p>
3029
3030 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
3031 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
3032
3033 <p><blockquote><pre>
3034 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
3035 Export list for nas-server:
3036 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
3037 root@tjener:~#
3038 </pre></blockquote></p>
3039
3040 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
3041 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
3042 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
3043 NFS access.</p>
3044
3045 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
3046 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
3047 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
3048
3049 <p><blockquote><pre>
3050 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3051 </pre></blockquote></p>
3052
3053 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
3054 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
3055 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
3056 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
3057
3058 <p><blockquote><pre>
3059 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3060 objectClass: automount
3061 cn: nas-server
3062 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3063
3064 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3065 objectClass: top
3066 objectClass: automountMap
3067 ou: auto.nas-server
3068
3069 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3070 objectClass: automount
3071 cn: /
3072 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
3073 </pre></blockquote></p>
3074
3075 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
3076 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
3077 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
3078
3079 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
3080 the storage server directly by just visiting the
3081 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
3082 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
3083
3084       </div>
3085       <div class="tags">
3086
3087
3088         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
3089
3090
3091       </div>
3092     </div>
3093     <div class="padding"></div>
3094
3095     <div class="entry">
3096       <div class="title">
3097         <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>
3098       </div>
3099       <div class="date">
3100         22nd February 2014
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="body">
3103         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
3104 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
3105 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
3106 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
3107 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
3108 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
3109 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
3110 proper home since then.</p>
3111
3112 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
3113 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
3114 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
3115 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
3116 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
3117
3118 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
3119 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
3120 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
3121 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3122 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3123 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3124 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3125 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3126 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3127
3128       </div>
3129       <div class="tags">
3130
3131
3132         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3133
3134
3135       </div>
3136     </div>
3137     <div class="padding"></div>
3138
3139     <div class="entry">
3140       <div class="title">
3141         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3142       </div>
3143       <div class="date">
3144          3rd February 2014
3145       </div>
3146       <div class="body">
3147         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3148 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3149 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3150 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3151 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3152 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3153 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3154 <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>,
3155 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3156
3157 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3158 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3159 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3160 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3161 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3162 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3163
3164 <p><blockquote><pre>
3165 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3166 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3167 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3168 dhclient /dev/eth0
3169 </pre></blockquote></p>
3170
3171 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3172 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3173 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3174
3175 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3176 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3177 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3178 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3179 side.</p>
3180
3181 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3182 stuff:</p>
3183
3184 <p><blockquote><pre>
3185 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3186 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3187 EOF
3188 apt-get update
3189 apt-get dist-upgrade
3190 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3191     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3192 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3193 </pre></blockquote></p>
3194
3195 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3196 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3197 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3198 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3199 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3200 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3201 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3202 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3203 ssh instead.
3204
3205 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3206 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3207 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3208 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3209 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3210 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3211
3212 <p><blockquote><pre>
3213 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3214 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3215 EOF
3216 </pre></blockquote></p>
3217
3218 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3219 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3220 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3221 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3222
3223 <p><blockquote><pre>
3224 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3225 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3226 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3227 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3228 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3229 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3230 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3231 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3232 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3233 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3234 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3235 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3236 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3237 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3238 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3239 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3240 #
3241 </pre></blockquote></p>
3242
3243 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3244 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3245 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3246 command line stuff.<p>
3247
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="tags">
3250
3251
3252         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>.
3253
3254
3255       </div>
3256     </div>
3257     <div class="padding"></div>
3258
3259     <div class="entry">
3260       <div class="title">
3261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
3262       </div>
3263       <div class="date">
3264         29th January 2014
3265       </div>
3266       <div class="body">
3267         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
3268 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
3269 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
3270 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
3271 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
3272 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
3273 investigated in
3274 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
3275 from December 2013, in the article
3276 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
3277 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
3278 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
3279 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
3280 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
3281 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
3282 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
3283 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
3284
3285 <p><blockquote>
3286 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
3287 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
3288 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
3289 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
3290 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
3291 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
3292 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
3293 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
3294 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
3295 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
3296 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
3297 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
3298
3299 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
3300 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
3301 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
3302 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
3303 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
3304 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
3305 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
3306 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
3307 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
3308 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
3309 </blockquote><p>
3310
3311 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
3312 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
3313 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
3314 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
3315 summarized like this:</p>
3316
3317 <p><blockquote>
3318 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
3319 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
3320 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
3321 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
3322 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
3323 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
3324 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
3325 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
3326 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
3327 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
3328 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
3329 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
3330 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
3331 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
3332 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
3333 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
3334 </blockquote></p>
3335
3336 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
3337 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
3338 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
3339 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
3340
3341 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3342 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3343 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3344
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="tags">
3347
3348
3349         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
3350
3351
3352       </div>
3353     </div>
3354     <div class="padding"></div>
3355
3356     <div class="entry">
3357       <div class="title">
3358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3359       </div>
3360       <div class="date">
3361         14th January 2014
3362       </div>
3363       <div class="body">
3364         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3365 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3366 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3367 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3368 the source.  The company behind it provide
3369 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3370 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3371 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3372 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3373 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3374 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3375 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3376 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3377 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3378 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3379 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3380 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3381 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3382 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3383 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3384 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3385 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3386 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3387 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3388
3389 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3390
3391 <ul>
3392
3393   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3394   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3395   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3396
3397 </ul>
3398
3399 <p>You can
3400 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3401 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3402 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3403 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3404 include a test suite check.</p>
3405
3406       </div>
3407       <div class="tags">
3408
3409
3410         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>.
3411
3412
3413       </div>
3414     </div>
3415     <div class="padding"></div>
3416
3417     <div class="entry">
3418       <div class="title">
3419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
3420       </div>
3421       <div class="date">
3422         25th December 2013
3423       </div>
3424       <div class="body">
3425         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3426 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
3427 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
3428 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
3429 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
3430 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
3431 George</a>.</p>
3432
3433 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
3434
3435 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3436
3437 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
3438 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
3439 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
3440 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
3441 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
3442 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
3443
3444 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
3445 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
3446 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
3447 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
3448 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
3449 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
3450 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
3451 to help building another school's informational education concept from
3452 scratch.</p>
3453
3454 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
3455 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
3456 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
3457
3458 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
3459 and cycling.</p>
3460
3461 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3462 project?</strong></p>
3463
3464 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
3465 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
3466 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
3467 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
3468 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
3469 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
3470
3471 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
3472 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
3473 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
3474 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
3475 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
3476 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
3477 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
3478 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
3479 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
3480
3481 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
3482 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
3483 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
3484 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
3485
3486 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3487 Edu?</strong></p>
3488
3489 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
3490 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
3491 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
3492 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
3493 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
3494 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
3495 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
3496 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
3497 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
3498 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
3499 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
3500 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
3501 that it rocks!</p>
3502
3503 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
3504 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
3505 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
3506 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
3507 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
3508 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
3509 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
3510
3511 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3512 Edu?</strong></p>
3513
3514 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
3515 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
3516 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
3517 can list a few points about that:</p>
3518
3519 <ul>
3520
3521  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
3522  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
3523  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
3524
3525 </ul>
3526
3527 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
3528
3529 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3530
3531 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
3532 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
3533 year.</p>
3534
3535 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
3536 run text tools. I use
3537 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
3538 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
3539 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
3540 based full-featured student management software with the two),
3541 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
3542 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
3543 coloured world called the WWW, I use
3544 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
3545 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
3546 e-mail.</p>
3547
3548 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
3549 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
3550 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
3551 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
3552 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
3553 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
3554 Facebook now ;).</p>
3555
3556 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3557 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3558
3559 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
3560 side is what I have experienced.</p>
3561
3562 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
3563 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
3564 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
3565 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
3566 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
3567 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
3568 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
3569 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
3570 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
3571 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
3572 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
3573 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
3574 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
3575 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
3576 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
3577 plain criminal.</p>
3578
3579 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
3580 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
3581 founded an association named
3582 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
3583 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
3584 area of free and open source software, for example the
3585 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
3586 Teckids and are the youth programme of
3587 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
3588 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
3589 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
3590 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
3591 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
3592 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
3593
3594 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
3595 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
3596 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
3597 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
3598 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
3599 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
3600 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
3601 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
3602 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
3603 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
3604 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
3605 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
3606
3607 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
3608 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
3609 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
3610 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
3611
3612 <!--
3613
3614 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
3615
3616 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
3617 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
3618
3619  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
3620    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
3621    of the decision makers above;
3622  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
3623    knowledge about free software
3624
3625 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
3626
3627 -->
3628
3629       </div>
3630       <div class="tags">
3631
3632
3633         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3634
3635
3636       </div>
3637     </div>
3638     <div class="padding"></div>
3639
3640     <div class="entry">
3641       <div class="title">
3642         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
3643       </div>
3644       <div class="date">
3645          6th December 2013
3646       </div>
3647       <div class="body">
3648         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
3649 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3650 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
3651 had a new school administrator show up on
3652 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
3653 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
3654 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
3655 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
3656 Germany a few years ago.</p>
3657
3658 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3659
3660 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
3661 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
3662 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
3663 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
3664
3665 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
3666 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
3667 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
3668 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
3669 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
3670 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
3671 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
3672 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
3673 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
3674
3675 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3676 project?</strong></p>
3677
3678 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
3679 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
3680 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
3681 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
3682
3683 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3684 Edu?</strong></p>
3685
3686 <ul>
3687   <li>Quick installation,</li>
3688   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
3689   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
3690   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
3691     single company,</li>
3692   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
3693     experience and problem solutions.</li>
3694 </ul>
3695
3696 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3697 Edu?</strong></p>
3698
3699 <ul>
3700   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
3701   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
3702   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
3703   working again reliably.
3704
3705   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
3706   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
3707   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
3708   as their base.
3709
3710   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
3711   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
3712   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
3713   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
3714   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
3715   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
3716
3717   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
3718   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
3719   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
3720   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
3721   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
3722   schemes.</li>
3723
3724   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
3725   compared to Debian.</li>
3726
3727 </ul>
3728
3729 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
3730 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
3731 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
3732 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
3733
3734 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3735
3736 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
3737 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
3738 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
3739 programming languages for teaching.</p>
3740
3741 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3742 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3743
3744 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
3745
3746 <ul>
3747
3748   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
3749     teaching and learning.</li>
3750
3751   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
3752     home, and at their working place without running into license or
3753     conversion problems.</li>
3754
3755   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
3756     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
3757     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
3758     science, not products.</li>
3759
3760   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
3761     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
3762
3763 </ul>
3764
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="tags">
3767
3768
3769         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
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/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
3779       </div>
3780       <div class="date">
3781         30th November 2013
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="body">
3784         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
3785 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
3786 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
3787 experiment with interesting network technology, the
3788 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
3789 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
3790 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
3791 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
3792 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
3793 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
3794 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
3795 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
3796 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
3797 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
3798 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
3799 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
3800 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
3801 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
3802 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
3803 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
3804
3805       </div>
3806       <div class="tags">
3807
3808
3809         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3810
3811
3812       </div>
3813     </div>
3814     <div class="padding"></div>
3815
3816     <div class="entry">
3817       <div class="title">
3818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3819       </div>
3820       <div class="date">
3821         24th November 2013
3822       </div>
3823       <div class="body">
3824         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3825 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3826 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3827 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3828 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3829 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3830 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3831 is working on.  I checked the
3832 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3833 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3834 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3835 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3836 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3837 These are the release notes:</p>
3838
3839 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3840
3841 <ul>
3842
3843   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3844    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3845    up.</li>
3846
3847   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3848
3849   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3850    Matthias Klose.</li>
3851
3852   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3853    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3854
3855   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3856    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3857    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3858
3859 </ul>
3860
3861 <p>You can
3862 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3863 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3864 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3865 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3866 include a testsuite check.</p>
3867
3868       </div>
3869       <div class="tags">
3870
3871
3872         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>.
3873
3874
3875       </div>
3876     </div>
3877     <div class="padding"></div>
3878
3879     <div class="entry">
3880       <div class="title">
3881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
3882       </div>
3883       <div class="date">
3884         21st November 2013
3885       </div>
3886       <div class="body">
3887         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
3888 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
3889 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
3890 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
3891 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
3892 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
3893 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
3894 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
3895 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
3896 TED talk
3897 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
3898 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
3899 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
3900
3901 <blockquote>
3902
3903 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
3904 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
3905 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
3906 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
3907 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
3908 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
3909 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
3910 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
3911 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
3912 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
3913 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
3914
3915 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
3916 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
3917 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
3918
3919 </blockquote>
3920
3921 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
3922 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3923 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
3924 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
3925 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3926 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3927 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3928 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
3929 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
3930
3931       </div>
3932       <div class="tags">
3933
3934
3935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3936
3937
3938       </div>
3939     </div>
3940     <div class="padding"></div>
3941
3942     <div class="entry">
3943       <div class="title">
3944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
3945       </div>
3946       <div class="date">
3947         13th November 2013
3948       </div>
3949       <div class="body">
3950         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3951 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
3952 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3953 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
3954 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3955 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
3956 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
3957 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
3958 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
3959 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
3960 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3961 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
3962 right away. :)</p>
3963
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="tags">
3966
3967
3968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3969
3970
3971       </div>
3972     </div>
3973     <div class="padding"></div>
3974
3975     <div class="entry">
3976       <div class="title">
3977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
3978       </div>
3979       <div class="date">
3980         10th November 2013
3981       </div>
3982       <div class="body">
3983         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
3984 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
3985 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
3986 MR3040 as a mesh node using
3987 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
3988
3989 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
3990 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
3991 and downloaded
3992 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
3993 recommended firmware image</a>
3994 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
3995 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
3996 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
3997 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
3998 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
3999
4000 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
4001 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
4002 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
4003 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
4004 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
4005 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
4006 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
4007 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
4008 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
4009 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
4010 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
4011 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
4012 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
4013
4014 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
4015 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
4016 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
4017 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
4018 them:</p>
4019
4020 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
4021
4022 <pre>
4023
4024 config interface 'loopback'
4025         option ifname 'lo'
4026         option proto 'static'
4027         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
4028         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
4029
4030 config globals 'globals'
4031         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
4032
4033 config interface 'lan'
4034         option ifname 'eth0'
4035         option type 'bridge'
4036         option proto 'dhcp'
4037         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
4038         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
4039         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
4040         option ip6assign '60'
4041
4042 config interface 'mesh'
4043         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4044         option mtu '1528'
4045         option proto 'batadv'
4046         option mesh 'bat0'
4047 </pre>
4048
4049 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
4050 <pre>
4051
4052 config wifi-device 'radio0'
4053         option type 'mac80211'
4054         option channel '11'
4055         option hwmode '11ng'
4056         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
4057         option htmode 'HT20'
4058         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
4059         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
4060         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
4061         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
4062         option disabled '0'
4063
4064 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
4065         option device 'radio0'
4066         option ifname 'adhoc0'
4067         option network 'mesh'
4068         option encryption 'none'
4069         option mode 'adhoc'
4070         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
4071         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
4072 </pre>
4073 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
4074 <pre>
4075
4076 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
4077         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
4078         option 'aggregated_ogms'
4079         option 'ap_isolation'
4080         option 'bonding'
4081         option 'fragmentation'
4082         option 'gw_bandwidth'
4083         option 'gw_mode'
4084         option 'gw_sel_class'
4085         option 'log_level'
4086         option 'orig_interval'
4087         option 'vis_mode'
4088         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
4089         option 'distributed_arp_table'
4090         option 'network_coding'
4091         option 'hop_penalty'
4092
4093 # yet another batX instance
4094 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
4095 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
4096 </pre>
4097
4098 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
4099 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
4100 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
4101
4102       </div>
4103       <div class="tags">
4104
4105
4106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4107
4108
4109       </div>
4110     </div>
4111     <div class="padding"></div>
4112
4113     <div class="entry">
4114       <div class="title">
4115         <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>
4116       </div>
4117       <div class="date">
4118          2nd November 2013
4119       </div>
4120       <div class="body">
4121         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4122 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4123 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4124 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4125 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4126
4127 <p><pre>
4128 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4129 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4130 # Provides:          rsyslog
4131 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4132 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4133 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4134 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4135 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4136 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4137 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4138 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4139 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4140 ### END INIT INFO
4141 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4142 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4143 </pre></p>
4144
4145 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4146 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4147 info/comments.</p>
4148
4149 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4150 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4151
4152 <p><pre>
4153 #!/bin/sh
4154
4155 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4156 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4157 # and status_of_proc is working.
4158 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4159
4160 #
4161 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4162
4163 #
4164 do_start()
4165 {
4166         # Return
4167         #   0 if daemon has been started
4168         #   1 if daemon was already running
4169         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4170         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4171                 || return 1
4172         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4173                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4174                 || return 2
4175         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4176         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4177         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4178 }
4179
4180 #
4181 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4182 #
4183 do_stop()
4184 {
4185         # Return
4186         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4187         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4188         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4189         #   other if a failure occurred
4190         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4191         RETVAL="$?"
4192         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4193         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4194         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4195         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4196         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4197         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4198         # sleep for some time.
4199         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4200         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4201         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4202         rm -f $PIDFILE
4203         return "$RETVAL"
4204 }
4205
4206 #
4207 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4208 #
4209 do_reload() {
4210         #
4211         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4212         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4213         # then implement that here.
4214         #
4215         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4216         return 0
4217 }
4218
4219 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4220 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4221 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4222 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4223     script="$1"
4224     shift
4225     . $script
4226 else
4227     exit 0
4228 fi
4229
4230 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4231 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4232
4233 # Exit if the package is not installed
4234 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4235
4236 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4237 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4238
4239 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4240 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4241
4242 case "$1" in
4243   start)
4244         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4245         do_start
4246         case "$?" in
4247                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4248                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4249         esac
4250         ;;
4251   stop)
4252         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4253         do_stop
4254         case "$?" in
4255                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4256                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4257         esac
4258         ;;
4259   status)
4260         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4261         ;;
4262   #reload|force-reload)
4263         #
4264         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4265         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4266         #
4267         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4268         #do_reload
4269         #log_end_msg $?
4270         #;;
4271   restart|force-reload)
4272         #
4273         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4274         # 'force-reload' alias
4275         #
4276         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4277         do_stop
4278         case "$?" in
4279           0|1)
4280                 do_start
4281                 case "$?" in
4282                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4283                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4284                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4285                 esac
4286                 ;;
4287           *)
4288                 # Failed to stop
4289                 log_end_msg 1
4290                 ;;
4291         esac
4292         ;;
4293   *)
4294         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4295         exit 3
4296         ;;
4297 esac
4298
4299 :
4300 </pre></p>
4301
4302 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4303 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4304 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4305 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4306
4307 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4308 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4309 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4310 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4311 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4312
4313       </div>
4314       <div class="tags">
4315
4316
4317         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>.
4318
4319
4320       </div>
4321     </div>
4322     <div class="padding"></div>
4323
4324     <div class="entry">
4325       <div class="title">
4326         <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>
4327       </div>
4328       <div class="date">
4329          1st November 2013
4330       </div>
4331       <div class="body">
4332         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4333 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4334 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4335 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4336 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4337 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4338 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4339 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4340 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4341 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4342 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4343 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4344
4345 <p>The source is now available from
4346 <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>
4347
4348       </div>
4349       <div class="tags">
4350
4351
4352         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4353
4354
4355       </div>
4356     </div>
4357     <div class="padding"></div>
4358
4359     <div class="entry">
4360       <div class="title">
4361         <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>
4362       </div>
4363       <div class="date">
4364         27th October 2013
4365       </div>
4366       <div class="body">
4367         <p>The
4368 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4369 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4370 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4371 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4372 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4373 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4374 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4375 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4376 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4377 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4378 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4379 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4380
4381 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4382 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4383 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4384 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4385 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4386 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4387 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4388 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4389 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4390 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4391 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4392 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4393 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4394 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4395 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4396 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4397 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4398 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4399 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4400 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4401 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4402 available from
4403 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4404 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4405
4406 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4407 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4408 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4409 list:</p>
4410
4411 <p><pre>
4412 #!/bin/sh
4413 set -e # Exit on first error
4414 rootdir="$1"
4415 cd "$rootdir"
4416 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4417 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4418 EOF
4419 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4420 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4421 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4422     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4423 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4424 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4425 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4426 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4427 </pre></p>
4428
4429 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4430 to build the image:</p>
4431
4432 <pre>
4433 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4434     --variant minbase \
4435     --arch armel \
4436     --distribution jessie \
4437     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4438     --image test.img \
4439     --size 600M \
4440     --bootsize 64M \
4441     --boottype vfat \
4442     --log-level debug \
4443     --verbose \
4444     --no-kernel \
4445     --no-extlinux \
4446     --root-password raspberry \
4447     --hostname raspberrypi \
4448     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4449     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4450     --package netbase \
4451     --package git-core \
4452     --package binutils \
4453     --package ca-certificates \
4454     --package wget \
4455     --package kmod
4456 </pre></p>
4457
4458 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
4459 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
4460 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
4461 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
4462 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
4463 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
4464 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
4465
4466 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
4467 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
4468 build dependency list.</p>
4469
4470 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
4471 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
4472 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
4473 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
4474
4475       </div>
4476       <div class="tags">
4477
4478
4479         Tags: <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>.
4480
4481
4482       </div>
4483     </div>
4484     <div class="padding"></div>
4485
4486     <div class="entry">
4487       <div class="title">
4488         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
4489       </div>
4490       <div class="date">
4491         21st October 2013
4492       </div>
4493       <div class="body">
4494         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
4495 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
4496 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
4497 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
4498 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
4499 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
4500 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
4501 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
4502
4503 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
4504 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
4505 instead, I started playing with a
4506 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
4507 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
4508 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
4509 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
4510 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
4511 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
4512 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
4513 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
4514 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
4515 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
4516 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
4517 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
4518 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
4519 every client on the local network.</p>
4520
4521 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
4522 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
4523 and a script
4524 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
4525 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
4526 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
4527 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
4528 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
4529 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
4530 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
4531 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
4532 support.</p>
4533
4534 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
4535 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
4536
4537 <p><pre>
4538 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
4539     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
4540 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
4541 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
4542 %
4543 </pre></p>
4544
4545 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
4546 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
4547 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
4548 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
4549 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
4550 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
4551
4552 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
4553 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
4554 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
4555
4556 <p><table>
4557
4558 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
4559 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
4560 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
4561 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
4562 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
4563 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
4564
4565 </table></p>
4566
4567 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
4568 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
4569 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
4570 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
4571 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
4572 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
4573 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
4574
4575       </div>
4576       <div class="tags">
4577
4578
4579         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4580
4581
4582       </div>
4583     </div>
4584     <div class="padding"></div>
4585
4586     <div class="entry">
4587       <div class="title">
4588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
4589       </div>
4590       <div class="date">
4591         19th October 2013
4592       </div>
4593       <div class="body">
4594         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
4595 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
4596 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
4597 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
4598 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
4599 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
4600 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
4601 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
4602
4603       </div>
4604       <div class="tags">
4605
4606
4607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4608
4609
4610       </div>
4611     </div>
4612     <div class="padding"></div>
4613
4614     <div class="entry">
4615       <div class="title">
4616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
4617       </div>
4618       <div class="date">
4619         15th October 2013
4620       </div>
4621       <div class="body">
4622         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4623 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4624 these. :)</p>
4625
4626 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4627 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4628 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4629 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
4630 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4631 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
4632 hope you will to. :)</p>
4633
4634 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4635 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4636 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
4637 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
4638 donated.  Are you next?</p>
4639
4640 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4641 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4642 statement under the heading
4643 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4644 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4645 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
4646 too.</p>
4647
4648       </div>
4649       <div class="tags">
4650
4651
4652         Tags: <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>.
4653
4654
4655       </div>
4656     </div>
4657     <div class="padding"></div>
4658
4659     <div class="entry">
4660       <div class="title">
4661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
4662       </div>
4663       <div class="date">
4664         11th October 2013
4665       </div>
4666       <div class="body">
4667         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
4668 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
4669 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
4670 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
4671 successful examples like
4672 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
4673 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
4674 (see
4675 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
4676 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
4677 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
4678 can be seen from their
4679 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
4680 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
4681 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
4682 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
4683 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
4684
4685 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
4686 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
4687 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
4688 my recent involvement in
4689 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
4690 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
4691 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
4692 when possible, given that most communication between people are
4693 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
4694 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
4695 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
4696 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
4697 important over the years.</p>
4698
4699 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
4700 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
4701 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
4702 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
4703 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
4704 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
4705 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
4706 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
4707 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
4708 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
4709 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
4710 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
4711 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
4712 speakers about this talk (from
4713 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
4714
4715 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4716
4717 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
4718 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
4719 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
4720 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
4721 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
4722 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
4723 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
4724 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
4725 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
4726 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
4727 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
4728 that project (from
4729 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
4730
4731 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
4732
4733 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
4734 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
4735 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
4736 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
4737 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
4738 based community mesh networks.</p>
4739
4740 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
4741 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
4742 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
4743 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
4744 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
4745 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
4746 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
4747 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
4748 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
4749
4750 <p><table>
4751 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
4752 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
4753 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
4754 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
4755 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
4756 </table></p>
4757
4758 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
4759 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
4760 VillageTelco about
4761 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
4762 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
4763 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
4764 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
4765 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
4766 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
4767
4768 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
4769 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
4770 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
4771 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
4772
4773 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
4774 us on IRC, either channel
4775 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
4776 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
4777 irc.freenode.net.</p>
4778
4779 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
4780 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
4781 and Innovation called
4782 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
4783 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
4784 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
4785 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
4786 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
4787 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
4788 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
4789 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
4790
4791 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
4792 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
4793 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
4794 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
4795 mesh system.</p>
4796
4797       </div>
4798       <div class="tags">
4799
4800
4801         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4802
4803
4804       </div>
4805     </div>
4806     <div class="padding"></div>
4807
4808     <div class="entry">
4809       <div class="title">
4810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
4811       </div>
4812       <div class="date">
4813          8th October 2013
4814       </div>
4815       <div class="body">
4816         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
4817 Salvador had published a
4818 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
4819 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
4820 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
4821 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
4822 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
4823 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
4824 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
4825 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
4826 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
4827 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
4828 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
4829 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
4830 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
4831 computers without hard drives by installing one central
4832 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
4833
4834 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
4835
4836 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
4837
4838 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
4839 me know. :)</p>
4840
4841       </div>
4842       <div class="tags">
4843
4844
4845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4846
4847
4848       </div>
4849     </div>
4850     <div class="padding"></div>
4851
4852     <div class="entry">
4853       <div class="title">
4854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
4855       </div>
4856       <div class="date">
4857         29th September 2013
4858       </div>
4859       <div class="body">
4860         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
4861 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
4862 complete announcement text can be found at
4863 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
4864 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
4865
4866 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
4867 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
4868 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
4869 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
4870
4871       </div>
4872       <div class="tags">
4873
4874
4875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4876
4877
4878       </div>
4879     </div>
4880     <div class="padding"></div>
4881
4882     <div class="entry">
4883       <div class="title">
4884         <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>
4885       </div>
4886       <div class="date">
4887         27th September 2013
4888       </div>
4889       <div class="body">
4890         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
4891 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
4892 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
4893 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
4894
4895 <ul>
4896
4897 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
4898 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
4899
4900 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
4901 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4902
4903 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
4904 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
4905 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
4906 (Youtube)</li>
4907
4908 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
4909 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
4910
4911 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
4912 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
4913
4914 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
4915 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
4916 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
4917
4918 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4919 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
4920 (Youtube)</li>
4921
4922 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4923 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
4924
4925 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4926 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
4927
4928 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4929 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4930 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
4931
4932 </ul>
4933
4934 <p>A larger list is available from
4935 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4936 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
4937
4938 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4939 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4940 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4941 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4942 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4943 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4944 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
4945 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4946 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
4947 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4948 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4949
4950       </div>
4951       <div class="tags">
4952
4953
4954         Tags: <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>.
4955
4956
4957       </div>
4958     </div>
4959     <div class="padding"></div>
4960
4961     <div class="entry">
4962       <div class="title">
4963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
4964       </div>
4965       <div class="date">
4966         16th September 2013
4967       </div>
4968       <div class="body">
4969         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4970 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
4971
4972 <blockquote>
4973 <p>Hi,</p>
4974
4975 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
4976 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4977 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
4978
4979 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
4980 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
4981 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
4982 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
4983
4984 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
4985 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
4986
4987 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
4988 compared to beta1:</p>
4989
4990 <ul>
4991
4992 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
4993 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
4994 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
4995 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
4996 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
4997 main server.</li>
4998 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
4999 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
5000 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
5001 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
5002 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
5003
5004 </ul>
5005
5006 <p>Where to get it:</p>
5007
5008 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5009
5010 <ul>
5011 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5012 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
5013 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
5014 </ul>
5015
5016 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
5017
5018 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
5019 <ul>
5020 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5021 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
5022 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
5023 </ul>
5024
5025 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
5026
5027 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
5028 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
5029 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
5030 as the other isos.</p>
5031
5032 <p>How to report bugs</p>
5033
5034 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
5035 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
5036
5037
5038 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
5039
5040 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
5041 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5042 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
5043 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5044 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5045 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5046 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5047 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5048 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5049 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5050 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5051 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5052 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5053
5054 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5055 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5056 Squeeze release.</p>
5057
5058 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
5059
5060 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5061 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5062 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5063 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5064 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
5065 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
5066 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
5067 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
5068 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
5069 directory.</p>
5070
5071
5072 <p>cheers,
5073 <br>        Holger</p>
5074 </blockquote>
5075
5076       </div>
5077       <div class="tags">
5078
5079
5080         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5081
5082
5083       </div>
5084     </div>
5085     <div class="padding"></div>
5086
5087     <div class="entry">
5088       <div class="title">
5089         <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>
5090       </div>
5091       <div class="date">
5092         10th September 2013
5093       </div>
5094       <div class="body">
5095         <p>I was introduced to the
5096 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5097 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5098 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5099 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5100 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5101 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5102 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5103 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5104
5105 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5106 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5107 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5108 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5109 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5110
5111 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5112 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5113 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5114 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5115 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5116 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5117 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5118 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5119 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5120 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5121 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5122 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5123 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5124 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5125 missing in Debian).</p>
5126
5127 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5128 scripts
5129 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5130 and a administrative web interface
5131 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5132 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5133 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5134 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5135 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5136 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5137 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5138 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5139 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5140 this is really working yet, see
5141 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5142 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5143 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5144 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5145 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5146 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5147 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5148
5149 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5150 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5151 at.</p>
5152
5153 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5154
5155 <ol>
5156
5157 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5158 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5159 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5160 to the Debian installer:<p>
5161 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5162
5163 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5164 install on.</li>
5165
5166 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5167 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5168
5169 </ol>
5170
5171 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5172
5173 <ol>
5174
5175 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5176 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5177 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5178 <pre>
5179 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5180 </pre></li>
5181 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5182 <pre>
5183 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5184    apt-key add -
5185 apt-get update
5186 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5187 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5188 </pre></li>
5189 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5190
5191 </ol>
5192
5193 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5194 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5195 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5196 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5197 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5198
5199 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5200 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5201 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5202 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5203
5204 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5205 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5206 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5207 irc.debian.org and the
5208 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5209 mailing list</a>.</p>
5210
5211 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5212 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5213 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5214 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5215 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5216 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5217
5218       </div>
5219       <div class="tags">
5220
5221
5222         Tags: <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>.
5223
5224
5225       </div>
5226     </div>
5227     <div class="padding"></div>
5228
5229     <div class="entry">
5230       <div class="title">
5231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5232       </div>
5233       <div class="date">
5234         22nd August 2013
5235       </div>
5236       <div class="body">
5237         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5238 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
5239 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
5240
5241 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
5242
5243 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5244 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5245
5246 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5247
5248 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5249 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5250 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5251 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5252 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5253 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5254 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5255 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
5256 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5257 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5258 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5259 desktop contains
5260 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5261 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5262 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5263 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5264
5265 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
5266 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
5267 release.</p>
5268
5269 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5270 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5271 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
5272 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
5273 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
5274 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
5275 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
5276 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
5277 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
5278 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
5279 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
5280
5281 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5282
5283 <ul>
5284
5285 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
5286     work also without a attached tty.</li>
5287 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
5288     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
5289     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
5290     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
5291     required).</li>
5292
5293 </ul>
5294
5295 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5296
5297 <ul>
5298
5299 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
5300 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
5301 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
5302 stick ISO image.</li>
5303 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
5304 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
5305 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
5306     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
5307     cope with this.</li>
5308 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
5309 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
5310     empty password hashes.</li>
5311 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
5312     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
5313     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
5314
5315 </ul>
5316
5317 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5318
5319 <ul>
5320
5321 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5322     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5323 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
5324     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
5325
5326 </ul>
5327
5328 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5329
5330 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5331
5332 <ul>
5333
5334 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5335
5336 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
5337
5338 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
5339
5340 </ul>
5341
5342 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
5343 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
5344
5345 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5346
5347 <ul>
5348
5349 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5350 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
5351 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
5352
5353 </ul>
5354
5355 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
5356 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
5357
5358
5359 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5360
5361 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5362
5363       </div>
5364       <div class="tags">
5365
5366
5367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5368
5369
5370       </div>
5371     </div>
5372     <div class="padding"></div>
5373
5374     <div class="entry">
5375       <div class="title">
5376         <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>
5377       </div>
5378       <div class="date">
5379         18th August 2013
5380       </div>
5381       <div class="body">
5382         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5383 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5384 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5385 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5386 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5387 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5388 currently on the disk.</p>
5389
5390 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5391 <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>
5392 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5393 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5394 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5395 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5396 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5397 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5398 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5399 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5400 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5401 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5402 the broken disks.</p>
5403
5404       </div>
5405       <div class="tags">
5406
5407
5408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5409
5410
5411       </div>
5412     </div>
5413     <div class="padding"></div>
5414
5415     <div class="entry">
5416       <div class="title">
5417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="date">
5420          2nd August 2013
5421       </div>
5422       <div class="body">
5423         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
5424 have worked on a Norwegian
5425 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5426 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
5427 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
5428 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
5429 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
5430 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
5431 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
5432 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
5433 progress of the translation:</p>
5434
5435 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
5436
5437 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
5438 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
5439 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
5440 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
5441 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
5442 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
5443 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
5444 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
5445 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
5446 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
5447 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
5448
5449 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
5450 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
5451 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
5452 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
5453 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
5454 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
5455 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
5456 project files currently available from
5457 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
5458
5459 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
5460 the updated
5461 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
5462 and
5463 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
5464 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
5465 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
5466 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
5467
5468       </div>
5469       <div class="tags">
5470
5471
5472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
5473
5474
5475       </div>
5476     </div>
5477     <div class="padding"></div>
5478
5479     <div class="entry">
5480       <div class="title">
5481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5482       </div>
5483       <div class="date">
5484         27th July 2013
5485       </div>
5486       <div class="body">
5487         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5488 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5489
5490 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
5491 2013-07-27</strong></p>
5492
5493 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5494 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5495
5496 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5497
5498 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5499 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5500 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5501 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5502 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5503 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5504 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5505 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5506 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5507 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5508 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5509 desktop contains
5510 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5511 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
5512 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5513 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
5514
5515 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5516 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5517 Squeeze release.</p>
5518
5519 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5520 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5521 release.</p>
5522
5523 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
5524
5525 <ul>
5526
5527 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
5528    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
5529 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
5530    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
5531    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
5532    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
5533    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
5534 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
5535 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
5536 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
5537    crash bugs.</li>
5538
5539 </ul>
5540
5541 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
5542
5543 <ul>
5544
5545 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
5546    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
5547 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
5548    netinst CD.</li>
5549 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
5550    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
5551 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
5552    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
5553    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
5554 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
5555    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
5556    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
5557 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
5558    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
5559    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
5560 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
5561    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
5562 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
5563
5564 </ul>
5565
5566 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
5567
5568 <ul>
5569
5570 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
5571 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5572     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
5573 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
5574
5575 </ul>
5576
5577 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
5578
5579 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
5580
5581 <ul>
5582
5583 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
5584
5585 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
5586
5587 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
5588
5589 </ul>
5590
5591 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
5592 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
5593
5594 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
5595
5596 <ul>
5597
5598 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
5599 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
5600 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
5601
5602 </ul>
5603
5604 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
5605 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
5606
5607
5608 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
5609
5610 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
5611
5612       </div>
5613       <div class="tags">
5614
5615
5616         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5617
5618
5619       </div>
5620     </div>
5621     <div class="padding"></div>
5622
5623     <div class="entry">
5624       <div class="title">
5625         <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>
5626       </div>
5627       <div class="date">
5628         17th July 2013
5629       </div>
5630       <div class="body">
5631         <p>Today I switched to
5632 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5633 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5634 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5635 <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
5636 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5637 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5638 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5639 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5640 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5641 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5642 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5643 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5644 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5645 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5646 station from now on.</p>
5647
5648 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5649 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5650 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5651 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5652 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5653 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5654 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5655 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5656 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5657 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5658 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5659 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5660
5661 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5662 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5663 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5664 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5665 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5666 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5667 parameters are tuned:</p>
5668
5669 <ul>
5670
5671 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5672     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5673
5674 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5675     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5676     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5677
5678 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5679     systems.</li>
5680
5681 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5682     /etc/fstab.</li>
5683
5684 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5685
5686 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5687     cron.daily).</li>
5688
5689 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5690     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5691
5692 </ul>
5693
5694 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5695 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5696 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5697 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5698 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5699 from getting the data on the disk (see
5700 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5701 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5702 right thing to do.</p>
5703
5704 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5705 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5706 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5707
5708 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5709 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5710 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5711 instead of during my work.</p>
5712
5713 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5714 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5715
5716 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5717 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5718 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5719
5720 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5721 there.</p>
5722
5723 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5724 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5725 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5726 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5727 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5728 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5729 back.</p>
5730
5731       </div>
5732       <div class="tags">
5733
5734
5735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5736
5737
5738       </div>
5739     </div>
5740     <div class="padding"></div>
5741
5742     <div class="entry">
5743       <div class="title">
5744         <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>
5745       </div>
5746       <div class="date">
5747         10th July 2013
5748       </div>
5749       <div class="body">
5750         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5751 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5752 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5753 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5754 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5755 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5756 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5757 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5758
5759 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5760 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5761 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5762 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5763 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5764 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5765 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5766 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5767 lock up when I download a new
5768 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5769 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5770 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5771
5772 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5773 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5774 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5775 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5776 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5777 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5778
5779 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5780 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5781 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5782 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5783 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5784 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5785
5786 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5787 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5788 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5789 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5790 exist).</p>
5791
5792       </div>
5793       <div class="tags">
5794
5795
5796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5797
5798
5799       </div>
5800     </div>
5801     <div class="padding"></div>
5802
5803     <div class="entry">
5804       <div class="title">
5805         <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>
5806       </div>
5807       <div class="date">
5808          9th July 2013
5809       </div>
5810       <div class="body">
5811         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5812 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5813 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5814 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5815 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5816 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5817 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5818
5819 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5820 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5821 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5822 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5823 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5824
5825       </div>
5826       <div class="tags">
5827
5828
5829         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>.
5830
5831
5832       </div>
5833     </div>
5834     <div class="padding"></div>
5835
5836     <div class="entry">
5837       <div class="title">
5838         <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>
5839       </div>
5840       <div class="date">
5841          5th July 2013
5842       </div>
5843       <div class="body">
5844         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5845 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5846 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5847 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5848 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5849 ended up picking a
5850 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5851 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5852 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5853 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5854 on that below.</p>
5855
5856 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5857 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5858 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5859 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5860 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5861 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5862 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5863 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5864 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5865
5866 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5867 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5868 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5869 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5870 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5871 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5872 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5873
5874 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5875 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5876
5877 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5878 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5879 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5880 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5881 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5882 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5883 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5884 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5885 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5886 kernel developers as
5887 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5888 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5889 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5890 Lenovo forums, both for
5891 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5892 2012-11-10</a> and for
5893 <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
5894 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5895 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5896 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5897 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5898 There is even a
5899 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5900 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5901 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5902
5903 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5904 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5905 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5906 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5907 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5908 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5909 fixed. :)</p>
5910
5911       </div>
5912       <div class="tags">
5913
5914
5915         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5916
5917
5918       </div>
5919     </div>
5920     <div class="padding"></div>
5921
5922     <div class="entry">
5923       <div class="title">
5924         <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>
5925       </div>
5926       <div class="date">
5927          4th July 2013
5928       </div>
5929       <div class="body">
5930         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5931 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5932 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5933 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5934 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5935 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5936 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5937 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5938 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5939
5940 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5941 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5942 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5943 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5944 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5945 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5946 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5947
5948 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5949 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5950 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5951 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5952 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5953 new laptop now. :)</p>
5954
5955 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5956
5957       </div>
5958       <div class="tags">
5959
5960
5961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5962
5963
5964       </div>
5965     </div>
5966     <div class="padding"></div>
5967
5968     <div class="entry">
5969       <div class="title">
5970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="date">
5973          3rd July 2013
5974       </div>
5975       <div class="body">
5976         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5977 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
5978
5979 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
5980 2013-07-03</strong></p>
5981
5982 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5983 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
5984
5985 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
5986
5987 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5988 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5989 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5990 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5991 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5992 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5993 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5994 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5995 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5996 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5997 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5998 desktop contains
5999 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6000 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6001 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6002 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6003
6004 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6005 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6006 Squeeze release.</p>
6007
6008 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6009 <ul>
6010   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
6011   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
6012     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
6013     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
6014   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
6015     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
6016     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
6017   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
6018     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
6019     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
6020     too.</li>
6021   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
6022     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
6023 </ul>
6024 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6025 <ul>
6026   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
6027   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
6028   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
6029     up for some language options.</li>
6030   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
6031   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
6032   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
6033     d-i is doing it.</li>
6034   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
6035     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
6036   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
6037     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
6038     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
6039   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
6040     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
6041   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
6042   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
6043     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
6044   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
6045     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
6046 </ul>
6047 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6048 <ul>
6049   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6050     available yet (698840).</li>
6051   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
6052 </ul>
6053 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6054
6055 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6056 <ul>
6057   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6058   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
6059   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
6060 </ul>
6061
6062 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
6063 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
6064
6065 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
6066 <ul>
6067   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6068   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
6069   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
6070 </ul>
6071
6072 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
6073 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
6074
6075 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6076
6077 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6078
6079       </div>
6080       <div class="tags">
6081
6082
6083         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6084
6085
6086       </div>
6087     </div>
6088     <div class="padding"></div>
6089
6090     <div class="entry">
6091       <div class="title">
6092         <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>
6093       </div>
6094       <div class="date">
6095         25th June 2013
6096       </div>
6097       <div class="body">
6098         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
6099 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
6100 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
6101 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
6102 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
6103 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
6104 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
6105 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
6106 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
6107 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
6108 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
6109
6110 <p><pre>
6111 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6112 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
6113 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
6114 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
6115 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
6116 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
6117 firmware-ipw2x00
6118 firmware-ipw2x00
6119 Preconfiguring packages ...
6120 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
6121 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
6122 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
6123 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
6124 #
6125 </pre></p>
6126
6127 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
6128 printed instead:</p>
6129
6130 <p><pre>
6131 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
6132 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
6133 #
6134 </pre></p>
6135
6136 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
6137 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
6138
6139 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
6140 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
6141 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
6142 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
6143 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
6144 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
6145 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
6146 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
6147 machine.</p>
6148
6149 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
6150 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
6151 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
6152 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
6153 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
6154 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
6155
6156       </div>
6157       <div class="tags">
6158
6159
6160         Tags: <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>.
6161
6162
6163       </div>
6164     </div>
6165     <div class="padding"></div>
6166
6167     <div class="entry">
6168       <div class="title">
6169         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
6170       </div>
6171       <div class="date">
6172         22nd June 2013
6173       </div>
6174       <div class="body">
6175         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6176 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
6177 which check that services are running, working, and return the
6178 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
6179 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
6180 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
6181 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
6182 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
6183 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
6184
6185 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
6186 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
6187 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
6188 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
6189 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
6190 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
6191 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
6192 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
6193 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
6194 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
6195 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
6196 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
6197 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
6198 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
6199
6200 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
6201 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
6202 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
6203 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
6204 the problem.</p>
6205
6206 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
6207 please join us on
6208 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6209 irc.debian.org</a> and the
6210 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
6211 list.</p>
6212
6213       </div>
6214       <div class="tags">
6215
6216
6217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6218
6219
6220       </div>
6221     </div>
6222     <div class="padding"></div>
6223
6224     <div class="entry">
6225       <div class="title">
6226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
6227       </div>
6228       <div class="date">
6229         17th June 2013
6230       </div>
6231       <div class="body">
6232         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
6233 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
6234 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
6235 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
6236 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
6237 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
6238 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
6239 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
6240
6241 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6242
6243 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
6244 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
6245 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
6246 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
6247 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
6248 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
6249 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
6250 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
6251 field.</p>
6252
6253 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
6254 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
6255 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
6256 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
6257 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
6258 the only one we have in our country.</p>
6259
6260 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6261 project?</strong></p>
6262
6263 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
6264 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
6265 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
6266 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
6267 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
6268 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
6269 ways to contribute.</p>
6270
6271 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
6272 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
6273 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
6274 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
6275 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
6276 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
6277 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
6278 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
6279 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
6280 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
6281
6282 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6283 Edu?</strong></p>
6284
6285 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
6286 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
6287 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
6288 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
6289 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
6290 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
6291 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
6292 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
6293
6294 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
6295 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
6296 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
6297 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
6298 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
6299 project.</p>
6300
6301 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6302 Edu?</strong></p>
6303
6304 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
6305 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
6306 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
6307 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
6308 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
6309 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
6310 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
6311 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
6312 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
6313
6314 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
6315 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
6316 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
6317 on.</p>
6318
6319 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6320
6321 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
6322 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
6323 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
6324 Enlightenment project a lot!),
6325 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
6326 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
6327 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
6328 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
6329 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
6330
6331 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6332 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6333
6334 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
6335 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
6336 that:</p>
6337
6338 <ul>
6339
6340 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
6341
6342 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
6343     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
6344     of teenagers more?</li>
6345
6346 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
6347     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
6348     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
6349     them!)</li>
6350
6351 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
6352     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
6353     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
6354
6355 </ul>
6356
6357 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
6358 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
6359 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
6360 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
6361 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
6362
6363       </div>
6364       <div class="tags">
6365
6366
6367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6368
6369
6370       </div>
6371     </div>
6372     <div class="padding"></div>
6373
6374     <div class="entry">
6375       <div class="title">
6376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
6377       </div>
6378       <div class="date">
6379         12th June 2013
6380       </div>
6381       <div class="body">
6382         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
6383 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6384 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
6385 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
6386 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
6387 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
6388
6389 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6390
6391 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
6392 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
6393 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
6394
6395 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
6396 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
6397 each other.</p>
6398
6399 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6400 project?</strong></p>
6401
6402 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
6403 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
6404 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
6405 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
6406 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
6407 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
6408 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
6409 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
6410 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
6411 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
6412 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
6413 we'll get there one day.</p>
6414
6415 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6416 Edu?</strong></p>
6417
6418 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
6419 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
6420 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
6421 very high quality work.</p>
6422
6423 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
6424 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
6425 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
6426 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
6427 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
6428
6429 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6430 Edu?</strong></p>
6431
6432 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
6433 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
6434 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
6435
6436 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
6437 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
6438 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
6439 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
6440 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
6441 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
6442 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
6443 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
6444 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
6445 currently.</p>
6446
6447 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
6448 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
6449 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
6450 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
6451 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
6452 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
6453 autonomous.</p>
6454
6455 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6456
6457 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
6458 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
6459 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
6460 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
6461 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
6462
6463 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
6464 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
6465 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
6466 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
6467 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
6468 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
6469 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
6470 X.</p>
6471
6472 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
6473 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
6474 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
6475 it :p)
6476
6477 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6478 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6479
6480 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
6481 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
6482 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
6483 that.</p>
6484
6485 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
6486 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
6487 advantage of that.</p>
6488
6489 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
6490 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
6491 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
6492 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
6493 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
6494 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
6495 best solution for them.</p>
6496
6497 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
6498 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
6499 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
6500
6501       </div>
6502       <div class="tags">
6503
6504
6505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6506
6507
6508       </div>
6509     </div>
6510     <div class="padding"></div>
6511
6512     <div class="entry">
6513       <div class="title">
6514         <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>
6515       </div>
6516       <div class="date">
6517         11th June 2013
6518       </div>
6519       <div class="body">
6520         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6521 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6522 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
6523 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
6524 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6525 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
6526 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6527 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
6528 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6529 i915 driver used by the
6530 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6531 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
6532
6533 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
6534 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6535 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
6536 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6537 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
6538
6539 <pre>
6540 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6541 update-initramfs -u -k all
6542 </pre>
6543
6544 <p>Since March 2012 there is
6545 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6546 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6547 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6548 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
6549 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6550 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
6551 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
6552 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6553 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6554 number.</p>
6555
6556 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6557 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6558
6559 <p><pre>
6560 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6561     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6562     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6563  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6564  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6565     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6566  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6567     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6568  Latency: 0
6569  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6570  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6571  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6572  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6573  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6574  Capabilities: <access denied>
6575  Kernel driver in use: i915
6576 </pre></p>
6577
6578 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6579
6580 <p><pre>
6581 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6582        ...
6583         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6584         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6585        ...
6586 }
6587 </pre></p>
6588
6589 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6590 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6591 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6592 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
6593 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6594 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6595 yet shown up in
6596 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
6597 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6598 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6599 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6600 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6601 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6602
6603 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6604 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
6605 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
6606 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6607 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
6608 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6609 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6610 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6611 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6612 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6613 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6614 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6615
6616 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6617 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6618 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6619 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6620 backlight.</p>
6621
6622       </div>
6623       <div class="tags">
6624
6625
6626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6627
6628
6629       </div>
6630     </div>
6631     <div class="padding"></div>
6632
6633     <div class="entry">
6634       <div class="title">
6635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6636       </div>
6637       <div class="date">
6638         10th June 2013
6639       </div>
6640       <div class="body">
6641         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6642 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
6643
6644 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
6645 2013-06-10</strong></p>
6646
6647 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6648 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6649
6650 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6651
6652 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6653 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6654 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6655 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6656 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6657 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6658 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6659 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6660 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6661 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6662 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6663 desktop contains
6664 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6665 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6666 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6667 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6668
6669 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6670 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6671 Squeeze release.</p>
6672
6673 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6674
6675 <ul>
6676
6677 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
6678 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
6679 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
6680 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
6681 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
6682
6683 </ul>
6684
6685 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6686
6687 <ul>
6688
6689 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
6690 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
6691 <li>New Romanian translation.
6692 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
6693 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
6694 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
6695 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
6696 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
6697 <li>More testsuite tests.
6698 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
6699 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
6700
6701 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
6702 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
6703
6704 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
6705 them up with GOsa².</li>
6706
6707 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
6708
6709 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
6710 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
6711 entered password). </li>
6712
6713 </ul>
6714
6715 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6716
6717 <ul>
6718
6719 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
6720
6721 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6722 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
6723 missing import feature).</li>
6724
6725 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
6726
6727 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
6728 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
6729 unfixed.</li>
6730
6731 </ul>
6732
6733 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6734
6735 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6736
6737 <ul>
6738
6739 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
6740
6741 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
6742
6743 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
6744
6745 </ul>
6746
6747 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
6748 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
6749
6750 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
6751
6752 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
6753
6754       </div>
6755       <div class="tags">
6756
6757
6758         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6759
6760
6761       </div>
6762     </div>
6763     <div class="padding"></div>
6764
6765     <div class="entry">
6766       <div class="title">
6767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
6768       </div>
6769       <div class="date">
6770          5th June 2013
6771       </div>
6772       <div class="body">
6773         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
6774 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
6775 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
6776 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
6777 the project:
6778
6779 <ol>
6780
6781 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
6782   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
6783   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
6784   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
6785   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
6786
6787 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
6788   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
6789   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
6790   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
6791   #698840</a>.</li>
6792
6793 </ol>
6794
6795 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
6796 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6797 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
6798
6799       </div>
6800       <div class="tags">
6801
6802
6803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6804
6805
6806       </div>
6807     </div>
6808     <div class="padding"></div>
6809
6810     <div class="entry">
6811       <div class="title">
6812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
6813       </div>
6814       <div class="date">
6815          4th June 2013
6816       </div>
6817       <div class="body">
6818         <p>It has been a while since my last English
6819 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6820 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
6821 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
6822 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
6823 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
6824
6825 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6826
6827 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
6828 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
6829 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
6830 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
6831
6832 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
6833 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
6834 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
6835
6836 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6837 project?</strong></p>
6838
6839 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
6840 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
6841 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
6842 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
6843 manual.
6844
6845 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
6846 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
6847 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
6848 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
6849
6850 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
6851 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
6852 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
6853 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
6854 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
6855 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
6856 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
6857 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
6858 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
6859 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
6860
6861 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
6862 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
6863 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
6864 beautiful project.</p>
6865
6866 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6867 Edu?</strong></p>
6868
6869 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
6870 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
6871 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
6872
6873 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
6874 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
6875 of educational free software.</p>
6876
6877 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6878 Edu?</strong></p>
6879
6880 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
6881 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
6882 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
6883 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
6884 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
6885
6886 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
6887 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
6888 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
6889 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
6890 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
6891 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
6892 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
6893 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
6894
6895 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6896
6897 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
6898 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
6899 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
6900 also using the mathematical software
6901 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
6902 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
6903 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
6904
6905 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
6906 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
6907 statistics?</strong></p>
6908
6909 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
6910 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
6911 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
6912 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
6913
6914 <ul>
6915
6916 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
6917 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
6918 constructions in planar geometry
6919
6920 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
6921 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
6922 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
6923
6924 </ul>
6925
6926 <p>I like also
6927 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
6928 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
6929 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
6930
6931 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6932 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6933
6934 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
6935
6936 <ul>
6937
6938 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
6939
6940 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
6941     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
6942     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
6943
6944 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
6945
6946 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
6947     system.</li>
6948
6949 </ul>
6950
6951       </div>
6952       <div class="tags">
6953
6954
6955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6956
6957
6958       </div>
6959     </div>
6960     <div class="padding"></div>
6961
6962     <div class="entry">
6963       <div class="title">
6964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
6965       </div>
6966       <div class="date">
6967          1st June 2013
6968       </div>
6969       <div class="body">
6970         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6971 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
6972 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
6973 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
6974 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
6975 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
6976 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
6977 program.</p>
6978
6979 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
6980
6981 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
6982 <p>
6983 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
6984 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
6985 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
6986 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
6987 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
6988 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
6989 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
6990 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
6991 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
6992 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
6993 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
6994 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
6995 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
6996 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
6997 </p>
6998
6999 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
7000 <p>
7001 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
7002 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
7003 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
7004 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
7005 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
7006 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7007 </p>
7008
7009 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
7010 <p>
7011 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7012 </p>
7013
7014 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
7015 <p>
7016 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
7017 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
7018 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
7019 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
7020 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
7021 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
7022 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
7023 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
7024 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
7025 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
7026 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
7027 </p>
7028
7029 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
7030 <p>
7031 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7032 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
7033 </p>
7034
7035 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
7036 <p>
7037 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
7038 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
7039 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
7040 </p>
7041
7042 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
7043 <p>
7044 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7045 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
7046 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
7047 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
7048 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
7049 </p>
7050
7051 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
7052 <p>
7053 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7054 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
7055 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7056 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
7057 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
7058 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
7059 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
7060 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
7061 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
7062 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
7063 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
7064 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
7065 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
7066 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
7067 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7068 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
7069 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
7070 </p>
7071
7072 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
7073 <p>
7074 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7075 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
7076 </p>
7077
7078 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
7079 <p>
7080 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
7081 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
7082 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
7083 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
7084 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
7085 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
7086 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
7087 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
7088 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
7089 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
7090 </p>
7091
7092 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
7093 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
7094 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
7095 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
7096 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
7097 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
7098 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
7099
7100       </div>
7101       <div class="tags">
7102
7103
7104         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7105
7106
7107       </div>
7108     </div>
7109     <div class="padding"></div>
7110
7111     <div class="entry">
7112       <div class="title">
7113         <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>
7114       </div>
7115       <div class="date">
7116         27th May 2013
7117       </div>
7118       <div class="body">
7119         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7120 <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
7121 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7122 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7123 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7124 and Windows 8.</p>
7125
7126 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7127 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7128 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7129 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7130 enough to tell.</p>
7131
7132 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7133 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7134 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7135 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7136 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7137 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7138 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7139 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7140 to follow.</p>
7141
7142 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7143 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7144 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7145 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7146 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7147 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7148 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7149 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7150
7151 <p>I've updated the
7152 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7153 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7154 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7155 machine.</p>
7156
7157 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7158 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7159
7160       </div>
7161       <div class="tags">
7162
7163
7164         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7165
7166
7167       </div>
7168     </div>
7169     <div class="padding"></div>
7170
7171     <div class="entry">
7172       <div class="title">
7173         <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>
7174       </div>
7175       <div class="date">
7176         25th May 2013
7177       </div>
7178       <div class="body">
7179         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7180 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7181 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7182 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7183 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7184 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7185
7186 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7187 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7188 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7189 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7190 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7191 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7192 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7193 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7194 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7195 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7196
7197 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7198 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7199 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7200 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7201 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7202 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7203
7204 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7205 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7206 on new Laptops?</p>
7207
7208       </div>
7209       <div class="tags">
7210
7211
7212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7213
7214
7215       </div>
7216     </div>
7217     <div class="padding"></div>
7218
7219     <div class="entry">
7220       <div class="title">
7221         <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>
7222       </div>
7223       <div class="date">
7224         17th May 2013
7225       </div>
7226       <div class="body">
7227         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7228 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7229 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7230 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7231 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7232 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7233 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7234 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7235 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7236 donate some money</a>.
7237
7238 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7239 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7240 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7241 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7242 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7243
7244 <p>The script,
7245 <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/>
7246 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7247 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7248 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7249
7250 <ol>
7251
7252 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7253 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7254 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7255     our configuration.</li>
7256 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7257     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7258     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7259     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7260 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7261     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7262 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7263
7264 </ol>
7265
7266 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7267 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7268 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7269 the needed packages.</p>
7270
7271 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7272 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7273 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7274 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7275 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7276 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7277
7278 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7279 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7280 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7281
7282 <p><pre>
7283 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7284 DESKTOP="lxde"
7285 </pre></p>
7286
7287 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7288 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7289 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7290 boot.</p>
7291
7292       </div>
7293       <div class="tags">
7294
7295
7296         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>.
7297
7298
7299       </div>
7300     </div>
7301     <div class="padding"></div>
7302
7303     <div class="entry">
7304       <div class="title">
7305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7306       </div>
7307       <div class="date">
7308         14th May 2013
7309       </div>
7310       <div class="body">
7311         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7312 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
7313 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7314
7315 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
7316 2013-05-14</strong></p>
7317
7318 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
7319 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
7320 codename "Wheezy".</p>
7321
7322 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7323
7324 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7325 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7326 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
7327 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7328 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7329 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7330 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
7331 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
7332
7333 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7334 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7335 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7336
7337 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7338 <ul>
7339   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
7340     default.</li>
7341   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
7342   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
7343   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
7344     ibus-anthy.</li>
7345 </ul>
7346
7347 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7348 <ul>
7349
7350   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
7351     reliability improvements.</li>
7352   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
7353     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
7354   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
7355     problems.</li>
7356   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
7357     direct:// URL.</li>
7358   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
7359   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
7360   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
7361   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
7362     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
7363   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
7364     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
7365 </ul>
7366
7367 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7368 <ul>
7369
7370   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
7371     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
7372     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
7373   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
7374   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7375     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
7376   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
7377   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
7378   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
7379     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
7380   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
7381     password submission problem
7382     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
7383
7384 </ul>
7385
7386 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7387
7388 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7389 <ul>
7390
7391   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7392   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
7393   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
7394
7395 </ul>
7396
7397 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
7398
7399 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
7400
7401 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7402
7403 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7404
7405       </div>
7406       <div class="tags">
7407
7408
7409         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7410
7411
7412       </div>
7413     </div>
7414     <div class="padding"></div>
7415
7416     <div class="entry">
7417       <div class="title">
7418         <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>
7419       </div>
7420       <div class="date">
7421         11th May 2013
7422       </div>
7423       <div class="body">
7424         <P>In January,
7425 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7426 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7427 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7428 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7429 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7430 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7431 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7432 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7433 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7434 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7435 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7436 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7437
7438 <p><table>
7439 <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>
7440 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7441 <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>
7442 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7443 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7444 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7445 <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>
7446 <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>
7447 <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>
7448 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7449 </table></p>
7450
7451 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7452 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7453 available in experimental.</p>
7454
7455 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7456 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7457 for LEGO designers.</p>
7458
7459       </div>
7460       <div class="tags">
7461
7462
7463         Tags: <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>.
7464
7465
7466       </div>
7467     </div>
7468     <div class="padding"></div>
7469
7470     <div class="entry">
7471       <div class="title">
7472         <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>
7473       </div>
7474       <div class="date">
7475          5th May 2013
7476       </div>
7477       <div class="body">
7478         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7479 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7480 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7481 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7482 soon.</p>
7483
7484 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7485 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7486 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7487 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7488 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7489 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7490 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7491 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7492 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7493 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7494 Edu.</a>
7495
7496 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7497 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7498 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7499 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7500 follow.<p>
7501
7502       </div>
7503       <div class="tags">
7504
7505
7506         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>.
7507
7508
7509       </div>
7510     </div>
7511     <div class="padding"></div>
7512
7513     <div class="entry">
7514       <div class="title">
7515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7516       </div>
7517       <div class="date">
7518         26th April 2013
7519       </div>
7520       <div class="body">
7521         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
7522 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
7523 announcement:</p>
7524
7525 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
7526 2013-04-26</strong></p>
7527
7528 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
7529 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7530
7531 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7532
7533 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7534 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7535 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7536 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
7537 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7538 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7539 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7540 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7541 installed via the network.</p>
7542
7543 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7544 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7545 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
7546
7547 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7548
7549 <ul>
7550 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
7551   <ul>
7552      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
7553      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
7554          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
7555          manual.)</li>
7556      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
7557      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
7558      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
7559      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
7560      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
7561      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
7562      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
7563      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
7564      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
7565      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
7566      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
7567      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
7568          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
7569          manual</a> for more details.</li>
7570      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
7571          installation.</li>
7572      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
7573          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
7574   </ul></li>
7575 </ul>
7576
7577 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
7578 <ul>
7579 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
7580     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
7581     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
7582 </ul>
7583
7584 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
7585 <ul>
7586 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
7587     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
7588     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
7589 </ul>
7590
7591 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7592 <ul>
7593 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
7594     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
7595     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
7596 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
7597     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
7598     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
7599 </ul>
7600
7601 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
7602 <ul>
7603 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
7604     yet.</li>
7605 </ul>
7606
7607 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
7608
7609 <ul>
7610 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
7611     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
7612     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
7613 </ul>
7614
7615 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7616
7617 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
7618 <ul>
7619 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7620 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
7621 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
7622 </ul>
7623
7624 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
7625
7626 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
7627
7628 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7629
7630 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7631
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="tags">
7634
7635
7636         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7637
7638
7639       </div>
7640     </div>
7641     <div class="padding"></div>
7642
7643     <div class="entry">
7644       <div class="title">
7645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
7646       </div>
7647       <div class="date">
7648         16th April 2013
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="body">
7651         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
7652 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
7653 Details about the gathering can be found
7654 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
7655 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
7656 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
7657 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
7658 weekend.</p>
7659
7660 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
7661 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
7662 Edu release.</p>
7663
7664 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
7665
7666       </div>
7667       <div class="tags">
7668
7669
7670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7671
7672
7673       </div>
7674     </div>
7675     <div class="padding"></div>
7676
7677     <div class="entry">
7678       <div class="title">
7679         <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>
7680       </div>
7681       <div class="date">
7682          3rd April 2013
7683       </div>
7684       <div class="body">
7685         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7686 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7687 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7688 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7689
7690 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7691 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7692 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7693 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7694 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7695 BTS. :)</p>
7696
7697       </div>
7698       <div class="tags">
7699
7700
7701         Tags: <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>.
7702
7703
7704       </div>
7705     </div>
7706     <div class="padding"></div>
7707
7708     <div class="entry">
7709       <div class="title">
7710         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
7711       </div>
7712       <div class="date">
7713         26th March 2013
7714       </div>
7715       <div class="body">
7716         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
7717 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
7718 font you use when printing.</p>
7719
7720 <p>Three years ago,
7721 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
7722 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
7723 changed their default front from
7724 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
7725 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
7726 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
7727 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
7728 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
7729 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
7730 prints.</p>
7731
7732 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
7733 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
7734 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
7735 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
7736 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
7737 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
7738 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
7739 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
7740 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
7741 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
7742 depend on the documents printed.</p>
7743
7744 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
7745 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
7746 and save some money in the process.</p>
7747
7748 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
7749 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
7750 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
7751 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
7752 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
7753 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
7754 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
7755 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
7756 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
7757
7758       </div>
7759       <div class="tags">
7760
7761
7762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7763
7764
7765       </div>
7766     </div>
7767     <div class="padding"></div>
7768
7769     <div class="entry">
7770       <div class="title">
7771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
7772       </div>
7773       <div class="date">
7774         24th March 2013
7775       </div>
7776       <div class="body">
7777         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
7778 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
7779 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
7780 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
7781 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
7782 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
7783 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
7784 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
7785 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
7786 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
7787 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
7788 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
7789
7790 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
7791 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
7792 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
7793 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
7794 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
7795 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
7796 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
7797 all I had to do was to use the
7798 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
7799 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
7800 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
7801 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
7802 xsltproc/fop (aka
7803 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
7804 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
7805 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
7806 technical detail.</p>
7807
7808 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
7809 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
7810 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
7811 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
7812 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
7813 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
7814
7815 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
7816 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
7817 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
7818 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
7819 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
7820 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
7821 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
7822 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
7823 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
7824
7825 <p><blockquote><pre>
7826 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7827 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7828   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7829     &lt;hr/&gt;
7830   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7831 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7832 </pre></blockquote></p>
7833
7834 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7835
7836 <p><blockquote><pre>
7837 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7838 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7839   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
7840     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
7841       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
7842     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
7843   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7844 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7845 </pre></blockquote></p>
7846
7847 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
7848 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
7849 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
7850 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
7851 enough.</p>
7852
7853 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
7854 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
7855 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
7856 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
7857 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
7858 look like this:</p>
7859
7860 <p><blockquote><pre>
7861 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7862 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
7863   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7864     &lt;br/&gt;
7865   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7866 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7867 </pre></blockquote></p>
7868
7869 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
7870
7871 <p><blockquote><pre>
7872 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
7873 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
7874   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
7875   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
7876     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
7877   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
7878 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
7879 </pre></blockquote></p>
7880
7881 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
7882 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
7883 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
7884 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
7885 page.</p>
7886
7887 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
7888 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
7889 github</a>
7890 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
7891 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
7892 days.</p>
7893
7894       </div>
7895       <div class="tags">
7896
7897
7898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7899
7900
7901       </div>
7902     </div>
7903     <div class="padding"></div>
7904
7905     <div class="entry">
7906       <div class="title">
7907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
7908       </div>
7909       <div class="date">
7910         17th March 2013
7911       </div>
7912       <div class="body">
7913         <p>Via
7914 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
7915 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
7916 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
7917 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7918 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
7919 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
7920 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
7921
7922 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
7923 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
7924
7925 <blockquote>
7926 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
7927 </blockquote>
7928
7929 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
7930
7931 <blockquote>
7932 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
7933 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
7934 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
7935 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
7936 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
7937 </blockquote>
7938
7939 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
7940 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
7941 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
7942 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
7943
7944 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
7945 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
7946
7947 <blockquote>
7948 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
7949 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
7950 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
7951 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
7952 </blockquote>
7953
7954 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
7955 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
7956 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
7957 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
7958 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
7959
7960 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
7961 embedding:</p>
7962
7963 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
7964
7965       </div>
7966       <div class="tags">
7967
7968
7969         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7970
7971
7972       </div>
7973     </div>
7974     <div class="padding"></div>
7975
7976     <div class="entry">
7977       <div class="title">
7978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
7979       </div>
7980       <div class="date">
7981          8th March 2013
7982       </div>
7983       <div class="body">
7984         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
7985 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
7986 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
7987 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7988 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
7989 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
7990 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
7991
7992 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
7993
7994 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
7995 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
7996
7997 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
7998 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
7999 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
8000 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
8001 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
8002 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
8003
8004 <p>Images are available for download at
8005 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
8006
8007 <p>md5sums:
8008 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8009 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8010 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8011
8012 <p>sha1sums:
8013 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
8014 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
8015 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
8016
8017 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
8018
8019 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
8020 2013-03-03:</p>
8021
8022 <ul>
8023   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
8024   <ul>
8025         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
8026         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
8027   </ul></li>
8028   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
8029   <ul>
8030         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
8031         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
8032   </ul></li>
8033   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
8034      <ul>
8035         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
8036         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
8037         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
8038                 Closes: #664596</li>
8039         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
8040                 Closes: #664976</li>
8041         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
8042            <ul>
8043                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
8044                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
8045            </ul></li>
8046         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
8047            <ul>
8048                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
8049                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
8050                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
8051                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
8052                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
8053            </ul></li>
8054         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
8055     </ul>
8056   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
8057     <ul>
8058         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
8059     </ul></li>
8060 </ul>
8061
8062 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
8063 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
8064 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
8065 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
8066
8067 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
8068 mailinglist
8069 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
8070 </p></blockquote>
8071
8072 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
8073
8074       </div>
8075       <div class="tags">
8076
8077
8078         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8079
8080
8081       </div>
8082     </div>
8083     <div class="padding"></div>
8084
8085     <div class="entry">
8086       <div class="title">
8087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
8088       </div>
8089       <div class="date">
8090          3rd March 2013
8091       </div>
8092       <div class="body">
8093         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
8094 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
8095 support using
8096 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
8097 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
8098 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
8099 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
8100 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
8101 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
8102 using the GNU LGPL, and
8103 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
8104
8105 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
8106 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
8107 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
8108 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
8109 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
8110 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
8111
8112 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
8113 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
8114 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
8115 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
8116 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
8117 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
8118 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
8119 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
8120 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
8121 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
8122 signal distribution is handled using
8123 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
8124 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
8125 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
8126 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
8127 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
8128 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
8129 them up a bit more first.</p>
8130
8131 <p>The development is coordinated on the
8132 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
8133 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
8134 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
8135 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
8136 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
8137 development.</p>
8138
8139       </div>
8140       <div class="tags">
8141
8142
8143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8144
8145
8146       </div>
8147     </div>
8148     <div class="padding"></div>
8149
8150     <div class="entry">
8151       <div class="title">
8152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
8153       </div>
8154       <div class="date">
8155         27th February 2013
8156       </div>
8157       <div class="body">
8158         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
8159 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
8160 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
8161 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
8162 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
8163 (where I am the chair of the board) and
8164 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
8165 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
8166 GNU», with this description:
8167
8168 <p><blockquote>
8169 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
8170 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
8171 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
8172 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
8173 </blockquote></p>
8174
8175 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
8176 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
8177 am really curious how many will show up.  See
8178 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
8179 page</a> for the location details.</p>
8180
8181       </div>
8182       <div class="tags">
8183
8184
8185         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
8186
8187
8188       </div>
8189     </div>
8190     <div class="padding"></div>
8191
8192     <div class="entry">
8193       <div class="title">
8194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="date">
8197         15th February 2013
8198       </div>
8199       <div class="body">
8200         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
8201 now a great source of free maps available from
8202 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
8203 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
8204 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
8205 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
8206 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
8207 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
8208 page for descriptions).</p>
8209
8210 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
8211 map you can just edit the
8212 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
8213 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
8214
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="tags">
8217
8218
8219         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
8220
8221
8222       </div>
8223     </div>
8224     <div class="padding"></div>
8225
8226     <div class="entry">
8227       <div class="title">
8228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
8229       </div>
8230       <div class="date">
8231         12th February 2013
8232       </div>
8233       <div class="body">
8234         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
8235 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
8236 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
8237 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
8238 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
8239 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
8240 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
8241 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
8242 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
8243 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
8244 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
8245 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
8246 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
8247 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
8248 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
8249 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
8250
8251 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
8252 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
8253 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
8254 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
8255 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
8256 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
8257 fields:</p>
8258
8259 <p><pre>
8260 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8261 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8262 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
8263 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8264 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8265 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8266 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8267 </pre></p>
8268
8269 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
8270 answer regarding
8271 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
8272 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
8273 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
8274 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
8275
8276 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
8277
8278 <p><pre>
8279 BEGIN:VCARD
8280 VERSION:2.1
8281 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
8282 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
8283 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
8284 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
8285 REV:20130212T095000Z
8286 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
8287 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
8288 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
8289 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
8290 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
8291 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
8292 END:VCARD
8293 </pre></p>
8294
8295 <p>The resulting QR code created using
8296 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
8297 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
8298 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
8299 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
8300 system.</p>
8301
8302 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
8303
8304 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
8305 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
8306 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
8307 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
8308
8309 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
8310 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
8311
8312       </div>
8313       <div class="tags">
8314
8315
8316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8317
8318
8319       </div>
8320     </div>
8321     <div class="padding"></div>
8322
8323     <div class="entry">
8324       <div class="title">
8325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
8326       </div>
8327       <div class="date">
8328         10th February 2013
8329       </div>
8330       <div class="body">
8331         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
8332
8333 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
8334 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
8335 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
8336 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
8337 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
8338 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
8339 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
8340 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
8341 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
8342 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
8343 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
8344
8345 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
8346 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
8347 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
8348 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
8349 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
8350 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
8351 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
8352 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
8353 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
8354 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
8355 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
8356 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
8357 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
8358 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
8359 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
8360 ones own
8361 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
8362 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
8363 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
8364 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
8365 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
8366 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
8367 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
8368 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
8369 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
8370 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
8371 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
8372
8373 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
8374 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
8375 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
8376 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
8377 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
8378 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
8379
8380 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
8381 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
8382 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
8383
8384       </div>
8385       <div class="tags">
8386
8387
8388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8389
8390
8391       </div>
8392     </div>
8393     <div class="padding"></div>
8394
8395     <div class="entry">
8396       <div class="title">
8397         <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>
8398       </div>
8399       <div class="date">
8400          2nd February 2013
8401       </div>
8402       <div class="body">
8403         <p>My
8404 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
8405 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
8406 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
8407 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
8408 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
8409 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
8410 version too.</p>
8411
8412 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
8413 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
8414 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
8415 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
8416 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
8417 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
8418 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
8419 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
8420
8421 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
8422 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
8423 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
8424 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
8425 it. :)</p>
8426
8427 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8428 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8429 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8430
8431       </div>
8432       <div class="tags">
8433
8434
8435         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>.
8436
8437
8438       </div>
8439     </div>
8440     <div class="padding"></div>
8441
8442     <div class="entry">
8443       <div class="title">
8444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
8445       </div>
8446       <div class="date">
8447         22nd January 2013
8448       </div>
8449       <div class="body">
8450         <p>Yesterday, I
8451 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
8452 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
8453 pluggable hardware devices, which I
8454 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
8455 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
8456 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
8457 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
8458 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
8459 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
8460 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
8461 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
8462 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
8463 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
8464
8465 <pre>
8466 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
8467 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
8468 </pre>
8469
8470 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
8471 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
8472 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
8473 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
8474
8475 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
8476 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
8477 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
8478 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
8479 word.</p>
8480
8481 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
8482 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8483 process.</p>
8484
8485 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8486 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
8487
8488       </div>
8489       <div class="tags">
8490
8491
8492         Tags: <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>.
8493
8494
8495       </div>
8496     </div>
8497     <div class="padding"></div>
8498
8499     <div class="entry">
8500       <div class="title">
8501         <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>
8502       </div>
8503       <div class="date">
8504         21st January 2013
8505       </div>
8506       <div class="body">
8507         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8508 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8509 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
8510 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
8511 it, fetch the
8512 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8513 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
8514 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
8515 autostart script.</p>
8516
8517 <p>The design is simple:</p>
8518
8519 <ul>
8520
8521 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8522 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
8523
8524 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8525 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8526 initially did.</li>
8527
8528 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8529 the APT database, a database
8530 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8531 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
8532
8533 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8534 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8535 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8536 package or packages.</li>
8537
8538 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8539 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
8540
8541 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8542 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
8543
8544 </ul>
8545
8546 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
8547 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
8548 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8549 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
8550
8551 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8552 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8553 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8554 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8555 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
8556
8557 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8558 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
8559 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8560 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8561 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8562 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8563 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8564 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
8565
8566 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8567 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8568 '<tt>svn checkout
8569 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8570 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
8571 devscripts package.</p>
8572
8573 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
8574 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8575 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
8576 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8577 instructions</a> for details.</p>
8578
8579       </div>
8580       <div class="tags">
8581
8582
8583         Tags: <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>.
8584
8585
8586       </div>
8587     </div>
8588     <div class="padding"></div>
8589
8590     <div class="entry">
8591       <div class="title">
8592         <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>
8593       </div>
8594       <div class="date">
8595         19th January 2013
8596       </div>
8597       <div class="body">
8598         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
8599 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8600 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
8601 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
8602 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
8603 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
8604 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8605 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8606 not a durable solution.
8607
8608 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
8609 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
8610
8611 <ul>
8612
8613 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8614   than A4).</li>
8615 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
8616 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
8617 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
8618 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
8619 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
8620 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
8621 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
8622 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
8623 size).</li>
8624 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8625   X.org packages.</li>
8626 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8627   the time).
8628
8629 </ul>
8630
8631 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8632 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8633 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8634 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
8635 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8636 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8637 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8638 still be useful.</p>
8639
8640 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8641 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
8642 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
8643 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8644 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8645 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
8646
8647       </div>
8648       <div class="tags">
8649
8650
8651         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8652
8653
8654       </div>
8655     </div>
8656     <div class="padding"></div>
8657
8658     <div class="entry">
8659       <div class="title">
8660         <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>
8661       </div>
8662       <div class="date">
8663         18th January 2013
8664       </div>
8665       <div class="body">
8666         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8667 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
8668 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8669 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8670 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8671 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8672 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
8673
8674 <pre>
8675 #!/usr/bin/python
8676 import sys
8677 import apt
8678 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8679     cache = apt.Cache()
8680     cache.open(None)
8681     thepkgs = []
8682     for pkg in cache:
8683         version = pkg.candidate
8684         if version is None:
8685             version = pkg.installed
8686         if version is None:
8687             continue
8688         record = version.record
8689         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8690             continue
8691         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8692         for t in mime_types:
8693             t = t.rstrip().strip()
8694             if t == mimetype:
8695                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8696     return thepkgs
8697 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8698 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
8699     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
8700 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8701 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8702     print "  %s" %pkg
8703 </pre>
8704
8705 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
8706
8707 <pre>
8708 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8709 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8710   gecko-mediaplayer
8711 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8712 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8713   browser-plugin-gnash
8714 %
8715 </pre>
8716
8717 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8718 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8719 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
8720 anyone working on adding it?</p>
8721
8722 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8723 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8724 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
8725 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
8726 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8727 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
8728
8729       </div>
8730       <div class="tags">
8731
8732
8733         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8734
8735
8736       </div>
8737     </div>
8738     <div class="padding"></div>
8739
8740     <div class="entry">
8741       <div class="title">
8742         <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>
8743       </div>
8744       <div class="date">
8745         16th January 2013
8746       </div>
8747       <div class="body">
8748         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8749 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8750 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8751 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8752 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8753 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8754 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8755 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8756
8757 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8758 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8759 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8760 can be found on the
8761 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8762 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8763 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8764 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8765 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8766
8767 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8768
8769 <pre>
8770   count MIME type
8771   ----- -----------------------
8772      32 text/plain
8773      30 audio/mpeg
8774      29 image/png
8775      28 image/jpeg
8776      27 application/ogg
8777      26 audio/x-mp3
8778      25 image/tiff
8779      25 image/gif
8780      22 image/bmp
8781      22 audio/x-wav
8782      20 audio/x-flac
8783      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8784      18 video/x-ms-asf
8785      18 audio/x-musepack
8786      18 audio/x-mpeg
8787      18 application/x-ogg
8788      17 video/mpeg
8789      17 audio/x-scpls
8790      17 audio/ogg
8791      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8792 </pre>
8793
8794 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8795
8796 <pre>
8797   count MIME type
8798   ----- -----------------------
8799      33 text/plain
8800      32 image/png
8801      32 image/jpeg
8802      29 audio/mpeg
8803      27 image/gif
8804      26 image/tiff
8805      26 application/ogg
8806      25 audio/x-mp3
8807      22 image/bmp
8808      21 audio/x-wav
8809      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8810      19 audio/x-mpeg
8811      18 video/mpeg
8812      18 audio/x-scpls
8813      18 audio/x-flac
8814      18 application/x-ogg
8815      17 video/x-ms-asf
8816      17 text/html
8817      17 audio/x-musepack
8818      16 image/x-xbitmap
8819 </pre>
8820
8821 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8822
8823 <pre>
8824   count MIME type
8825   ----- -----------------------
8826      31 text/plain
8827      31 image/png
8828      31 image/jpeg
8829      29 audio/mpeg
8830      28 application/ogg
8831      27 image/gif
8832      26 image/tiff
8833      26 audio/x-mp3
8834      23 audio/x-wav
8835      22 image/bmp
8836      21 audio/x-flac
8837      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8838      19 audio/x-mpeg
8839      18 video/x-ms-asf
8840      18 video/mpeg
8841      18 audio/x-scpls
8842      18 application/x-ogg
8843      17 audio/x-musepack
8844      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8845      16 video/x-msvideo
8846 </pre>
8847
8848 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8849 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8850 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8851 issues.</p>
8852
8853 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8854 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8855
8856       </div>
8857       <div class="tags">
8858
8859
8860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8861
8862
8863       </div>
8864     </div>
8865     <div class="padding"></div>
8866
8867     <div class="entry">
8868       <div class="title">
8869         <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>
8870       </div>
8871       <div class="date">
8872         15th January 2013
8873       </div>
8874       <div class="body">
8875         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8877 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8878 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8879 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8880 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8881 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8882 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8883 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8884 packages.</p>
8885
8886 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8887 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8888 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8889 modalias.</p>
8890
8891 <p><blockquote>
8892 Package: package-name
8893 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8894 </blockquote></p>
8895
8896 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8897 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8898
8899 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8900 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8901
8902 <p><blockquote>
8903 Package: cheese
8904 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8905 </blockquote></p>
8906
8907 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8908 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8909
8910 <p><blockquote>
8911 Package: pcmciautils
8912 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8913 </blockquote></p>
8914
8915 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8916 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8917
8918 <p><blockquote>
8919 Package: colorhug-client
8920 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8921 </blockquote></p>
8922
8923 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8924 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8925 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8926
8927 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8928 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8929 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8930 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8931 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8932 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8933 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8934 Raring.</p>
8935
8936 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8937 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8938 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8939 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8940 try the
8941 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8942 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8943 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8944 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8945
8946 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8947 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8948
8949 <p><blockquote>
8950 % ./hw-support-lookup
8951 <br>yubikey-personalization
8952 <br>%
8953 </blockquote></p>
8954
8955 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8956 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8957
8958 <p><blockquote>
8959 % ./hw-support-lookup
8960 <br>pcmciautils
8961 <br>%
8962 </blockquote></p>
8963
8964 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8965 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8966 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8967
8968 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8969 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8970 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8971 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8972 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8973 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8974 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8975 see if it work.</p>
8976
8977 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8978 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8979 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8980 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8981
8982       </div>
8983       <div class="tags">
8984
8985
8986         Tags: <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>.
8987
8988
8989       </div>
8990     </div>
8991     <div class="padding"></div>
8992
8993     <div class="entry">
8994       <div class="title">
8995         <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>
8996       </div>
8997       <div class="date">
8998         14th January 2013
8999       </div>
9000       <div class="body">
9001         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
9002 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
9003 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
9004 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
9005 in
9006 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9007 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
9008
9009 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
9010
9011 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
9012 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
9013 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
9014 &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;,
9015 &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
9016 &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;.
9017
9018 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
9019 this shell script:</p>
9020
9021 <pre>
9022 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
9023 </pre>
9024
9025 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
9026 using modinfo:</p>
9027
9028 <pre>
9029 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
9030 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
9031 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
9032 %
9033 </pre>
9034
9035 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
9036
9037 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
9038 Bridge memory controller:</p>
9039
9040 <p><blockquote>
9041 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
9042 </blockquote></p>
9043
9044 <p>This represent these values:</p>
9045
9046 <pre>
9047  v   00008086  (vendor)
9048  d   00002770  (device)
9049  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
9050  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
9051  bc  06        (bus class)
9052  sc  00        (bus subclass)
9053  i   00        (interface)
9054 </pre>
9055
9056 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
9057 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
9058 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
9059 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
9060
9061 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
9062 means.</p>
9063
9064 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
9065
9066 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
9067 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
9068
9069 <p><blockquote>
9070 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
9071 </blockquote></p>
9072
9073 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
9074
9075 <pre>
9076  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
9077  p    0001  (device product)
9078  d    0206  (bcddevice)
9079  dc     09  (device class)
9080  dsc    00  (device subclass)
9081  dp     00  (device protocol)
9082  ic     09  (interface class)
9083  isc    00  (interface subclass)
9084  ip     00  (interface protocol)
9085 </pre>
9086
9087 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
9088 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
9089 these alias entries show up:</p>
9090
9091 <p><blockquote>
9092 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
9093 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
9094 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
9095 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
9096 </blockquote></p>
9097
9098 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
9099 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
9100 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
9101
9102 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
9103
9104 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
9105 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
9106
9107 <p><blockquote>
9108 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9109 </blockquote></p>
9110
9111 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
9112
9113 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
9114
9115 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
9116 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
9117 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
9118
9119 <p><blockquote>
9120 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
9121 </blockquote></p>
9122
9123 <p>The values present are</p>
9124
9125 <pre>
9126  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
9127  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
9128  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
9129  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
9130  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
9131  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
9132  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
9133  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
9134  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
9135  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
9136  ct   10             (chassis type)
9137  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
9138 </pre>
9139
9140 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
9141 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
9142
9143 <pre>
9144   3 Desktop
9145   4 Low Profile Desktop
9146   5 Pizza Box
9147   6 Mini Tower
9148   7 Tower
9149   8 Portable
9150   9 Laptop
9151  10 Notebook
9152  11 Hand Held
9153  12 Docking Station
9154  13 All In One
9155  14 Sub Notebook
9156  15 Space-saving
9157  16 Lunch Box
9158  17 Main Server Chassis
9159  18 Expansion Chassis
9160  19 Sub Chassis
9161  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
9162  21 Peripheral Chassis
9163  22 RAID Chassis
9164  23 Rack Mount Chassis
9165  24 Sealed-case PC
9166  25 Multi-system
9167  26 CompactPCI
9168  27 AdvancedTCA
9169  28 Blade
9170  29 Blade Enclosing
9171 </pre>
9172
9173 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
9174 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
9175 claim it is a desktop.</p>
9176
9177 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
9178
9179 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
9180 test machine:</p>
9181
9182 <p><blockquote>
9183 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
9184 </blockquote></p>
9185
9186 <p>The values present are</p>
9187
9188 <pre>
9189   ty  01  (type)
9190   pr  00  (prototype)
9191   id  00  (id)
9192   ex  00  (extra)
9193 </pre>
9194
9195 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
9196 the valid values are.</p>
9197
9198 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
9199
9200 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
9201 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
9202 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
9203 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
9204 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
9205 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
9206 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
9207
9208 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
9209
9210 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
9211 one can use the following shell script:</p>
9212
9213 <pre>
9214   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
9215     echo "$id" ; \
9216     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
9217   done
9218 </pre>
9219
9220 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
9221 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
9222
9223 <pre>
9224   acpi:ACPI0003:
9225     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
9226   acpi:device:
9227   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
9228   acpi:IBM0068:
9229     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
9230     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
9231     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
9232     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
9233   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
9234     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
9235     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
9236     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
9237   [...]
9238 </pre>
9239
9240 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
9241 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
9242 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
9243 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
9244
9245 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
9246 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
9247 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
9248
9249       </div>
9250       <div class="tags">
9251
9252
9253         Tags: <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>.
9254
9255
9256       </div>
9257     </div>
9258     <div class="padding"></div>
9259
9260     <div class="entry">
9261       <div class="title">
9262         <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>
9263       </div>
9264       <div class="date">
9265         10th January 2013
9266       </div>
9267       <div class="body">
9268         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
9269 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
9270 Launcher and updated the Debian package
9271 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
9272 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
9273 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
9274 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
9275 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
9276 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
9277 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
9278 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
9279 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
9280 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
9281 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
9282 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
9283 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
9284 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
9285 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
9286
9287       </div>
9288       <div class="tags">
9289
9290
9291         Tags: <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>.
9292
9293
9294       </div>
9295     </div>
9296     <div class="padding"></div>
9297
9298     <div class="entry">
9299       <div class="title">
9300         <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>
9301       </div>
9302       <div class="date">
9303          9th January 2013
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="body">
9306         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
9307 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
9308 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
9309 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
9310 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
9311 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
9312 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
9313 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
9314 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
9315 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
9316 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
9317
9318 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
9319 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
9320 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
9321 simple:
9322
9323 <ul>
9324
9325 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
9326   starting when a user log in.</li>
9327
9328 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
9329   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
9330
9331 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
9332   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
9333   packages.</li>
9334
9335 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
9336   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
9337
9338 </ul>
9339
9340 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
9341 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
9342 discover database to find packages and
9343 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
9344 packages.</p>
9345
9346 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
9347 draft package is now checked into
9348 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
9349 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
9350 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
9351 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
9352 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
9353 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
9354 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
9355 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
9356 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
9357 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
9358 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
9359 because of the freeze).</p>
9360
9361 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
9362 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
9363 inserted):</p>
9364
9365 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
9366
9367 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
9368 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
9369 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
9370
9371 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
9372 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
9373 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
9374 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
9375 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
9376 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
9377 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
9378
9379 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
9380 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
9381 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
9382 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
9383 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
9384 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
9385 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
9386 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
9387 not be installed?</p>
9388
9389 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
9390 please send me an email. :)</p>
9391
9392       </div>
9393       <div class="tags">
9394
9395
9396         Tags: <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>.
9397
9398
9399       </div>
9400     </div>
9401     <div class="padding"></div>
9402
9403     <div class="entry">
9404       <div class="title">
9405         <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>
9406       </div>
9407       <div class="date">
9408          2nd January 2013
9409       </div>
9410       <div class="body">
9411         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
9412 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
9413 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
9414 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
9415 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
9416 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
9417 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
9418 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
9419 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
9420 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
9421
9422 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
9423 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
9424 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
9425
9426       </div>
9427       <div class="tags">
9428
9429
9430         Tags: <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>.
9431
9432
9433       </div>
9434     </div>
9435     <div class="padding"></div>
9436
9437     <div class="entry">
9438       <div class="title">
9439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9440       </div>
9441       <div class="date">
9442         28th December 2012
9443       </div>
9444       <div class="body">
9445         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
9446 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9447 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
9448 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
9449 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
9450 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
9451 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
9452 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
9453 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
9454 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
9455 followed by many others. :)</p>
9456
9457 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
9458 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
9459 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
9460 you want to donate to the project.</p>
9461
9462       </div>
9463       <div class="tags">
9464
9465
9466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9467
9468
9469       </div>
9470     </div>
9471     <div class="padding"></div>
9472
9473     <div class="entry">
9474       <div class="title">
9475         <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>
9476       </div>
9477       <div class="date">
9478         25th December 2012
9479       </div>
9480       <div class="body">
9481         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
9482 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
9483
9484 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
9485 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9486 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9487 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9488 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
9489 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9490 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9491 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
9492 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9493 name.</p>
9494
9495 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9496 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9497 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
9498
9499 <blockquote><pre>
9500 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9501 cd bitcoin
9502 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9503 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9504 </pre></blockquote>
9505
9506 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
9507 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9508 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
9509 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9510 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
9511 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9512 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9513 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9514 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
9515
9516 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9517 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9518 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9519
9520       </div>
9521       <div class="tags">
9522
9523
9524         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>.
9525
9526
9527       </div>
9528     </div>
9529     <div class="padding"></div>
9530
9531     <div class="entry">
9532       <div class="title">
9533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
9534       </div>
9535       <div class="date">
9536         21st December 2012
9537       </div>
9538       <div class="body">
9539         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9540 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
9541 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9542 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
9543 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9544 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
9545 is now maintained by a
9546 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9547 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
9548 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9549 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9550 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9551 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9552 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
9553 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9554 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9555 Corallo in a
9556 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9557 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9558 Debian package.</p>
9559
9560 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9561 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9562 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9563 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9564 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9565 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9566 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9567 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
9568 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9569 new version to unstable.
9570
9571 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9572 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
9573 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9574 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9575 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9576 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9577 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9578 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
9579 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9580 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9581 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
9582 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9583 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9584 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
9585 have not tested them.</p>
9586
9587 <p>My
9588 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9589 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9590 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9591 years ago, as can be
9592 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9593 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
9594 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9595 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9596 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
9597 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9598 the same address as last time,
9599 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
9600
9601       </div>
9602       <div class="tags">
9603
9604
9605         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>.
9606
9607
9608       </div>
9609     </div>
9610     <div class="padding"></div>
9611
9612     <div class="entry">
9613       <div class="title">
9614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
9615       </div>
9616       <div class="date">
9617         18th December 2012
9618       </div>
9619       <div class="body">
9620         <p>A few days ago I came across
9621 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
9622 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
9623 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
9624 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
9625 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
9626 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
9627 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
9628 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
9629 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
9630
9631 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
9632 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
9633 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
9634 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
9635
9636 <blockquote><pre>
9637 2004-05-27 Book Store
9638       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
9639       Liabilities:Visa
9640 </pre></blockquote>
9641
9642 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
9643 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
9644 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
9645 Spang</a>,
9646 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
9647 Keen</a>,
9648 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
9649 Cantino</a> and
9650 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
9651 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
9652 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
9653 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
9654 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
9655
9656 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
9657 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
9658 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
9659 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
9660 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
9661
9662 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
9663 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
9664 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
9665 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
9666 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
9667 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
9668 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
9669 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
9670 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
9671
9672       </div>
9673       <div class="tags">
9674
9675
9676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9677
9678
9679       </div>
9680     </div>
9681     <div class="padding"></div>
9682
9683     <div class="entry">
9684       <div class="title">
9685         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
9686       </div>
9687       <div class="date">
9688          6th December 2012
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="body">
9691         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
9692 Oslo</a>, we use the
9693 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
9694 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
9695 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
9696 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
9697 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
9698 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
9699 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
9700 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
9701 Python.</p>
9702
9703 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
9704 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
9705 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
9706 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
9707 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
9708 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
9709
9710 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
9711 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
9712 user currently logged in:</p>
9713
9714 <blockquote><pre>
9715 #!/usr/bin/env python
9716 import getpass
9717 import xmlrpclib
9718 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
9719 username = getpass.getuser()
9720 password = getpass.getpass()
9721 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
9722 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
9723 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
9724 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
9725 result = server.logout(sessionid)
9726 print result
9727 </pre></blockquote>
9728
9729 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
9730 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
9731
9732       </div>
9733       <div class="tags">
9734
9735
9736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
9737
9738
9739       </div>
9740     </div>
9741     <div class="padding"></div>
9742
9743     <div class="entry">
9744       <div class="title">
9745         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
9746       </div>
9747       <div class="date">
9748         17th November 2012
9749       </div>
9750       <div class="body">
9751         <p>While working on a
9752 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
9753 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
9754 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
9755 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
9756 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
9757 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
9758
9759 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
9760 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
9761 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
9762 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
9763 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
9764 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
9765 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
9766 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
9767 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
9768 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
9769 arguments.</p>
9770
9771 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
9772 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
9773 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
9774 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
9775 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
9776 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
9777 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
9778 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
9779
9780 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
9781 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
9782 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
9783 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
9784 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
9785 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
9786 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
9787 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
9788 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
9789 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
9790 correct right holder.</p>
9791
9792 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
9793 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
9794 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
9795 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
9796 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
9797 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
9798 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
9799 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
9800 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
9801 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
9802 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
9803 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
9804 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
9805 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
9806
9807 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
9808 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
9809 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
9810
9811 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
9812 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
9813
9814       </div>
9815       <div class="tags">
9816
9817
9818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9819
9820
9821       </div>
9822     </div>
9823     <div class="padding"></div>
9824
9825     <div class="entry">
9826       <div class="title">
9827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
9828       </div>
9829       <div class="date">
9830         14th November 2012
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="body">
9833         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
9834 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9835 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
9836 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
9837 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
9838 the people behind the German
9839 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
9840 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
9841 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
9842
9843 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9844
9845 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
9846 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
9847 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
9848
9849 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
9850 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
9851 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
9852 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
9853 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
9854 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
9855
9856 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
9857 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
9858 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
9859 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
9860 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
9861 relationship management and the communication processes in the
9862 project.</p>
9863
9864 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
9865 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
9866 and a yoga teacher.</p>
9867
9868 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9869 project?</strong></p>
9870
9871 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
9872
9873 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
9874 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
9875 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
9876 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
9877 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
9878 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
9879 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
9880 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
9881 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
9882 parents.</p>
9883
9884 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
9885 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
9886 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
9887 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
9888 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
9889 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
9890 Germany.</p>
9891
9892 <p>For information about our school project you can read
9893 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
9894 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
9895
9896 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9897 Edu?</strong></p>
9898
9899 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
9900 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
9901
9902 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
9903 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
9904 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
9905 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
9906 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
9907 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
9908 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
9909 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
9910 teachers, parents...</p>
9911
9912 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9913 Edu?</strong></p>
9914
9915 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
9916 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9917
9918 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
9919 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
9920 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
9921 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
9922 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9923
9924 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
9925 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
9926 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
9927 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
9928 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
9929 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
9930 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
9931
9932 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9933
9934 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
9935 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
9936 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
9937 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
9938
9939 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9940 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9941
9942 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
9943 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
9944 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
9945 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
9946 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
9947
9948 <ul>
9949
9950 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
9951 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
9952 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
9953
9954 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
9955 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
9956 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
9957 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
9958 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
9959 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
9960 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
9961
9962 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
9963 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
9964 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
9965 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
9966
9967 </ul>
9968
9969       </div>
9970       <div class="tags">
9971
9972
9973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9974
9975
9976       </div>
9977     </div>
9978     <div class="padding"></div>
9979
9980     <div class="entry">
9981       <div class="title">
9982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
9983       </div>
9984       <div class="date">
9985          4th November 2012
9986       </div>
9987       <div class="body">
9988         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
9989 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
9990 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
9991 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
9992 see how a member of the bitcoin community
9993 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
9994 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
9995 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
9996 competition.  My thoughts go to the
9997 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
9998 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
9999 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
10000 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
10001 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
10002
10003 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
10004 that the community already seem to have
10005 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
10006 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
10007 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
10008 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
10009 wealth is available.</p>
10010
10011       </div>
10012       <div class="tags">
10013
10014
10015         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10016
10017
10018       </div>
10019     </div>
10020     <div class="padding"></div>
10021
10022     <div class="entry">
10023       <div class="title">
10024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
10025       </div>
10026       <div class="date">
10027         26th October 2012
10028       </div>
10029       <div class="body">
10030         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
10031 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
10032 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
10033 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
10034 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
10035 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
10036 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
10037 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
10038 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
10039 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
10040 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
10041 it every time.</p>
10042
10043 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
10044 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
10045 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
10046 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
10047 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
10048 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
10049 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
10050 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
10051 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
10052 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
10053 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
10054 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
10055
10056 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
10057 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
10058 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
10059 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
10060 article: First the unplanned outage:
10061
10062 <blockquote><pre>
10063 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
10064 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
10065 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
10066 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
10067 Duration:    40 minutes
10068 Scope:       Exchange 2003
10069 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
10070              a cluster failover.
10071
10072 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
10073              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
10074 Technician:  [xxx]
10075 </pre></blockquote>
10076
10077 Next the planned outage:
10078
10079 <blockquote><pre>
10080 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
10081 Severity:    Major (Planned)
10082 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
10083 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
10084 Duration:    10 hours
10085 Scope:       H2 Transport
10086 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
10087              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
10088              4510s.
10089 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
10090              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
10091              connectivity.
10092 Technician:  [xxx]
10093 </pre></blockquote>
10094
10095 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
10096 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
10097 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
10098 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
10099 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
10100 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
10101 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
10102
10103 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
10104 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
10105 university too.  We do register
10106 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
10107 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
10108 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
10109 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
10110 for other sites to consider too?</p>
10111
10112       </div>
10113       <div class="tags">
10114
10115
10116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
10117
10118
10119       </div>
10120     </div>
10121     <div class="padding"></div>
10122
10123     <div class="entry">
10124       <div class="title">
10125         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
10126       </div>
10127       <div class="date">
10128         22nd October 2012
10129       </div>
10130       <div class="body">
10131         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
10132 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
10133 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
10134 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
10135 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
10136 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
10137 background information is available in Norwegian from
10138 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
10139 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
10140 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
10141 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
10142 willing to
10143 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
10144 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
10145 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
10146 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
10147 sounded like
10148 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
10149 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
10150 later.</p>
10151
10152 <p>And thought this action is
10153 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
10154 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
10155 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
10156 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
10157 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
10158 rights.</p>
10159
10160 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
10161 unacceptable terms.  For example
10162 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
10163 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
10164 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
10165 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
10166 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
10167
10168 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
10169 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
10170 restored the account of the user, as reported by
10171 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
10172 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
10173 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
10174 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
10175 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
10176 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
10177 reading two opinions from
10178 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
10179 Phipps</a> and
10180 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
10181 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
10182 details about the original story.</p>
10183
10184       </div>
10185       <div class="tags">
10186
10187
10188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
10189
10190
10191       </div>
10192     </div>
10193     <div class="padding"></div>
10194
10195     <div class="entry">
10196       <div class="title">
10197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
10198       </div>
10199       <div class="date">
10200         18th October 2012
10201       </div>
10202       <div class="body">
10203         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
10204 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
10205 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
10206 across a marvellous drawing by
10207 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
10208 visualising some of what is going on.
10209
10210 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
10211 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
10212
10213 <blockquote>
10214 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
10215 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
10216 </blockquote>
10217
10218 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
10219 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
10220 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
10221 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
10222 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
10223 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
10224
10225       </div>
10226       <div class="tags">
10227
10228
10229         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
10230
10231
10232       </div>
10233     </div>
10234     <div class="padding"></div>
10235
10236     <div class="entry">
10237       <div class="title">
10238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
10239       </div>
10240       <div class="date">
10241         12th October 2012
10242       </div>
10243       <div class="body">
10244         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
10245 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
10246 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
10247 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
10248 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
10249 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
10250 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
10251 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
10252 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
10253 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
10254 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
10255 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
10256 matter".</p>
10257
10258 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
10259 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
10260 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
10261 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
10262 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
10263 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
10264 to argue its side.</p>
10265
10266 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
10267 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
10268 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
10269 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
10270
10271 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
10272 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
10273 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
10274
10275       </div>
10276       <div class="tags">
10277
10278
10279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
10280
10281
10282       </div>
10283     </div>
10284     <div class="padding"></div>
10285
10286     <div class="entry">
10287       <div class="title">
10288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
10289       </div>
10290       <div class="date">
10291          3rd October 2012
10292       </div>
10293       <div class="body">
10294         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
10295 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
10296 the computer science book collection available in his local
10297 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
10298 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
10299 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
10300 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
10301 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
10302 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
10303 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
10304 recently published books.</p>
10305
10306 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
10307 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
10308 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
10309 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
10310 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
10311 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
10312 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
10313 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
10314 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
10315 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
10316 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
10317 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
10318 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
10319 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
10320 for the library that evening.</p>
10321
10322 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
10323 going to know that for example
10324 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
10325 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
10326 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
10327 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
10328 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
10329 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
10330 book right away.</p>
10331
10332       </div>
10333       <div class="tags">
10334
10335
10336         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10337
10338
10339       </div>
10340     </div>
10341     <div class="padding"></div>
10342
10343     <div class="entry">
10344       <div class="title">
10345         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
10346       </div>
10347       <div class="date">
10348         23rd September 2012
10349       </div>
10350       <div class="body">
10351         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
10352 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
10353 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10354 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
10355 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
10356 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
10357
10358 When I started, I
10359 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10360 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
10361 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
10362 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
10363 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
10364 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
10365 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
10366
10367 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10368
10369 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
10370 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
10371 the project files currently available from
10372 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10373
10374 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10375 the updated
10376 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10377 and
10378 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10379 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10380 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10381 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10382
10383       </div>
10384       <div class="tags">
10385
10386
10387         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10388
10389
10390       </div>
10391     </div>
10392     <div class="padding"></div>
10393
10394     <div class="entry">
10395       <div class="title">
10396         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
10397       </div>
10398       <div class="date">
10399         17th September 2012
10400       </div>
10401       <div class="body">
10402         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
10403 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
10404 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
10405 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
10406 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
10407 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
10408 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
10409
10410 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10411
10412 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
10413 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
10414 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
10415 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
10416 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
10417 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
10418 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
10419 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
10420 training is anyway very important</p>
10421
10422 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
10423 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
10424 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
10425 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
10426 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
10427
10428 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10429 project?</strong></p>
10430
10431 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
10432 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
10433 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
10434 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
10435 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
10436 hole.</p>
10437
10438 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10439 Edu?</strong></p>
10440
10441 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
10442 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
10443 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
10444 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
10445 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
10446 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
10447 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
10448 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
10449 hassle.</p>
10450
10451 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10452 Edu?</strong></p>
10453
10454 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
10455 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
10456 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
10457 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
10458 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
10459 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
10460 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
10461 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
10462
10463 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10464
10465 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
10466 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
10467 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
10468 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
10469 has the same...</p>
10470
10471 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
10472 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
10473 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
10474 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
10475
10476 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10477 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10478
10479 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
10480 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
10481 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
10482
10483 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
10484 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
10485 don't.</p>
10486
10487 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
10488 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
10489 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
10490 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
10491 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
10492 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
10493 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
10494
10495       </div>
10496       <div class="tags">
10497
10498
10499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
10500
10501
10502       </div>
10503     </div>
10504     <div class="padding"></div>
10505
10506     <div class="entry">
10507       <div class="title">
10508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
10509       </div>
10510       <div class="date">
10511         15th September 2012
10512       </div>
10513       <div class="body">
10514         <p>After the
10515 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
10516 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
10517 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
10518 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
10519 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
10520 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
10521 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
10522 was
10523 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
10524 formal working group should be formed.</p>
10525
10526 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
10527 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
10528 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
10529 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
10530 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
10531 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
10532 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
10533 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
10534
10535 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
10536 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
10537 IETF.</p>
10538
10539       </div>
10540       <div class="tags">
10541
10542
10543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10544
10545
10546       </div>
10547     </div>
10548     <div class="padding"></div>
10549
10550     <div class="entry">
10551       <div class="title">
10552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
10553       </div>
10554       <div class="date">
10555         12th September 2012
10556       </div>
10557       <div class="body">
10558         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
10559 publication of of
10560 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
10561 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
10562 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
10563 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
10564 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
10565 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
10566 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
10567 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
10568 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
10569 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
10570
10571 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
10572 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
10573 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
10574 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
10575
10576 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
10577 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
10578
10579       </div>
10580       <div class="tags">
10581
10582
10583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10584
10585
10586       </div>
10587     </div>
10588     <div class="padding"></div>
10589
10590     <div class="entry">
10591       <div class="title">
10592         <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>
10593       </div>
10594       <div class="date">
10595          7th September 2012
10596       </div>
10597       <div class="body">
10598         <p>As I
10599 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
10600 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
10601 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
10602 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
10603 repository for the project</a>.</p>
10604
10605 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
10606 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
10607 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
10608 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
10609
10610 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
10611 PostScript formats at
10612 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
10613 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
10614
10615       </div>
10616       <div class="tags">
10617
10618
10619         Tags: <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>.
10620
10621
10622       </div>
10623     </div>
10624     <div class="padding"></div>
10625
10626     <div class="entry">
10627       <div class="title">
10628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
10629       </div>
10630       <div class="date">
10631         23rd August 2012
10632       </div>
10633       <div class="body">
10634         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
10635 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
10636 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
10637 revisit the great site
10638 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
10639 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
10640 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
10641
10642       </div>
10643       <div class="tags">
10644
10645
10646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10647
10648
10649       </div>
10650     </div>
10651     <div class="padding"></div>
10652
10653     <div class="entry">
10654       <div class="title">
10655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
10656       </div>
10657       <div class="date">
10658         17th August 2012
10659       </div>
10660       <div class="body">
10661         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
10662 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
10663 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10664 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
10665 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
10666 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
10667 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
10668 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
10669 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
10670 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
10671 summer I
10672 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10673 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
10674 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
10675
10676 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
10677 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
10678 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
10679 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
10680 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
10681 progress:</p>
10682
10683 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10684
10685 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
10686 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
10687 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
10688 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
10689 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
10690 english version of the docbook source.</p>
10691
10692 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10693 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10694 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10695 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
10696 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
10697 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
10698 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
10699 project files currently available from <a
10700 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10701
10702 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10703 the updated
10704 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10705 and
10706 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10707 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10708 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10709 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10710
10711       </div>
10712       <div class="tags">
10713
10714
10715         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10716
10717
10718       </div>
10719     </div>
10720     <div class="padding"></div>
10721
10722     <div class="entry">
10723       <div class="title">
10724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
10725       </div>
10726       <div class="date">
10727         10th August 2012
10728       </div>
10729       <div class="body">
10730         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
10731 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
10732 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
10733 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
10734 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
10735 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
10736 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
10737 case for the language
10738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
10739 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
10740
10741 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
10742 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
10743 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
10744 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
10745 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
10746
10747 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
10748 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
10749 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
10750 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
10751 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
10752 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
10753 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
10754 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
10755 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
10756 alias for 'nb'.</p>
10757
10758 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
10759 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
10760 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
10761 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
10762 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
10763 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
10764 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
10765 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
10766 at the same time. :(</p>
10767
10768 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
10769 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
10770 processors. :(</p>
10771
10772 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
10773
10774       </div>
10775       <div class="tags">
10776
10777
10778         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10779
10780
10781       </div>
10782     </div>
10783     <div class="padding"></div>
10784
10785     <div class="entry">
10786       <div class="title">
10787         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
10788       </div>
10789       <div class="date">
10790         31st July 2012
10791       </div>
10792       <div class="body">
10793         <p>I tried to send this text to the
10794 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
10795 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
10796 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
10797 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
10798 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
10799 out.</p>
10800
10801 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
10802 learning curve at the moment.</p>
10803
10804 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
10805 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
10806 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
10807 available from
10808 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
10809 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
10810 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
10811 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
10812 Squeeze.</p>
10813
10814 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
10815 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
10816 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
10817 problems.</p>
10818
10819 <ul>
10820
10821 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
10822    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
10823    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
10824    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
10825    index references spanning several pages (See
10826    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
10827    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
10828    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
10829
10830 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
10831    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
10832    #683163</a>).</li>
10833
10834 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
10835    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
10836    footnote and text body, see
10837    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
10838    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
10839    refs listed are not right).</li>
10840
10841 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
10842
10843 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
10844    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
10845
10846 </ul>
10847
10848 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
10849 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
10850 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
10851
10852 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
10853
10854       </div>
10855       <div class="tags">
10856
10857
10858         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
10859
10860
10861       </div>
10862     </div>
10863     <div class="padding"></div>
10864
10865     <div class="entry">
10866       <div class="title">
10867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
10868       </div>
10869       <div class="date">
10870         21st July 2012
10871       </div>
10872       <div class="body">
10873         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
10874 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
10875 norwegian version</a> of the book
10876 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10877 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
10878 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
10879 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
10880 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10881
10882 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
10883 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
10884 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
10885 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
10886 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
10887 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
10888 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
10889 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
10890 print. :)</p>
10891
10892 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
10893 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
10894 language.</p>
10895
10896       </div>
10897       <div class="tags">
10898
10899
10900         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10901
10902
10903       </div>
10904     </div>
10905     <div class="padding"></div>
10906
10907     <div class="entry">
10908       <div class="title">
10909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
10910       </div>
10911       <div class="date">
10912         16th July 2012
10913       </div>
10914       <div class="body">
10915         <p>I am currently working on a
10916 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
10917 to translate</a> the book
10918 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
10919 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
10920 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
10921 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
10922 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
10923 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
10924 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10925
10926 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
10927 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
10928 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
10929 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
10930 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
10931 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
10932 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
10933 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
10934 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
10935
10936       </div>
10937       <div class="tags">
10938
10939
10940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10941
10942
10943       </div>
10944     </div>
10945     <div class="padding"></div>
10946
10947     <div class="entry">
10948       <div class="title">
10949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
10950       </div>
10951       <div class="date">
10952          9th July 2012
10953       </div>
10954       <div class="body">
10955         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10956 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
10957 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
10958 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
10959 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
10960 to adjust and scale the just released
10961 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10962 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
10963 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
10964
10965 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10966
10967 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
10968 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
10969 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
10970 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
10971 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
10972 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
10973 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
10974 perspective when working with IT.</p>
10975
10976 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10977 project?</strong></p>
10978
10979 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
10980 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
10981 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
10982 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
10983 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
10984 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
10985
10986 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10987 Edu?</strong></p>
10988
10989 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
10990 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
10991 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
10992 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
10993 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
10994 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
10995 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
10996 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
10997 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
10998 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
10999 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
11000 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
11001 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
11002 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
11003 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
11004 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
11005 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
11006 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
11007 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
11008 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
11009 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
11010 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
11011 quicker to update.
11012
11013 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11014 Edu?</strong></p>
11015
11016 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
11017 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
11018 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
11019 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
11020 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
11021 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
11022
11023 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
11024 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
11025 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
11026 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
11027 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
11028 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
11029 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
11030 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
11031 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
11032 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
11033 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
11034 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
11035 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
11036 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
11037 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
11038
11039 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
11040 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
11041 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
11042 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
11043 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
11044 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
11045 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
11046 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
11047
11048 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
11049 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
11050 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
11051 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
11052 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
11053 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
11054 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
11055 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
11056 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
11057 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
11058 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
11059 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
11060 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
11061 sound file.</p>
11062
11063 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
11064 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
11065 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
11066 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
11067 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
11068 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
11069 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
11070 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
11071 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
11072
11073 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11074
11075 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
11076 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
11077 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
11078 )</p>
11079
11080 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11081 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11082
11083 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
11084 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
11085 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
11086 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
11087 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
11088 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
11089 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
11090 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
11091 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
11092 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
11093 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
11094 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
11095 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
11096 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
11097 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
11098
11099 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
11100 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
11101 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
11102 management with Airtime</a>,
11103 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
11104 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
11105 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
11106 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
11107 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
11108
11109       </div>
11110       <div class="tags">
11111
11112
11113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11114
11115
11116       </div>
11117     </div>
11118     <div class="padding"></div>
11119
11120     <div class="entry">
11121       <div class="title">
11122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
11123       </div>
11124       <div class="date">
11125          8th July 2012
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="body">
11128         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
11129 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
11130 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
11131 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
11132 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
11133 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
11134 Steinberg in his blog post
11135 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
11136 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
11137 spending of your tax money.</p>
11138
11139 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
11140 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
11141 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
11142 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
11143 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
11144 purchases.</p>
11145
11146       </div>
11147       <div class="tags">
11148
11149
11150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11151
11152
11153       </div>
11154     </div>
11155     <div class="padding"></div>
11156
11157     <div class="entry">
11158       <div class="title">
11159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="date">
11162          7th July 2012
11163       </div>
11164       <div class="body">
11165         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11166 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
11167 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
11168 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
11169 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
11170 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
11171 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
11172 receive.  The software is
11173
11174 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
11175 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
11176 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
11177 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
11178 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
11179 Windows</a>.</p>
11180
11181 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
11182 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
11183
11184 <p><ul>
11185
11186   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
11187     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
11188
11189   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
11190     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
11191     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
11192     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
11193     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
11194     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
11195     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
11196     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
11197     </li>
11198
11199   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
11200     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
11201
11202   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
11203     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
11204
11205   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
11206     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
11207
11208   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
11209
11210   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
11211     formats </li>
11212
11213   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
11214     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
11215     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
11216     (as separate sets)</li>
11217
11218   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
11219     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
11220     percentage)</li>
11221
11222   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
11223     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
11224     memory):
11225     <ul>
11226       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
11227       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
11228       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
11229       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
11230       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
11231       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
11232       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
11233       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
11234       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
11235       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
11236           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
11237           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
11238           activity)</li>
11239       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
11240       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
11241     </ul></li>
11242
11243   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
11244     <ul>
11245       <li>Break periods</li>
11246       <li>For teacher(s):
11247         <ul>
11248           <li>Not available periods</li>
11249           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
11250           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11251           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11252           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11253           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11254
11255           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11256             days per week</li>
11257         </ul></li>
11258       <li>For students (sets):
11259         <ul>
11260           <li>Not available periods</li>
11261           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
11262           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
11263           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
11264           <li>Min hours daily</li>
11265           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
11266
11267           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
11268             days per week</li>
11269         </ul></li>
11270       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
11271         <ul>
11272           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
11273           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
11274           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
11275           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
11276           <li>End(s) students day</li>
11277           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
11278           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
11279             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
11280           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
11281           <li>Not overlapping</li>
11282           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
11283           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
11284         </ul></li>
11285     </ul></li>
11286
11287   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
11288     <ul>
11289       <li>Room not available periods</li>
11290       <li>For teacher(s):
11291         <ul>
11292           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11293           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11294           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11295         </ul>
11296       </li>
11297
11298       <li>For students (sets):
11299         <ul>
11300           <li>Home room(s)</li>
11301           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
11302           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
11303         </ul>
11304       </li>
11305       <li>Preferred room(s):
11306         <ul>
11307           <li>For a subject</li>
11308           <li>For an activity tag</li>
11309           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
11310           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
11311         </ul>
11312       </li>
11313
11314       <li>For a set of activities:
11315         <ul>
11316           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
11317         </ul>
11318       </li>
11319     </ul>
11320   </li>
11321 </ul></p>
11322
11323 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
11324 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
11325 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
11326 manually, check it out.
11327
11328 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
11329 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
11330 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
11331 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
11332 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
11333 section</a>.</p>
11334
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="tags">
11337
11338
11339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11340
11341
11342       </div>
11343     </div>
11344     <div class="padding"></div>
11345
11346     <div class="entry">
11347       <div class="title">
11348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
11349       </div>
11350       <div class="date">
11351          3rd July 2012
11352       </div>
11353       <div class="body">
11354         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
11355 project (Norwegian version of
11356 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
11357 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
11358 a problem with the municipalities using
11359 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
11360 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
11361 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
11362 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
11363 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
11364 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
11365 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
11366 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
11367 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
11368 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
11369 the From: header.</p>
11370
11371 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
11372 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
11373 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
11374 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
11375 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
11376 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
11377 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
11378 behaviour.</p>
11379
11380 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
11381 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
11382 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
11383 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
11384 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
11385 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
11386 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
11387
11388       </div>
11389       <div class="tags">
11390
11391
11392         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11393
11394
11395       </div>
11396     </div>
11397     <div class="padding"></div>
11398
11399     <div class="entry">
11400       <div class="title">
11401         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
11402       </div>
11403       <div class="date">
11404         26th June 2012
11405       </div>
11406       <div class="body">
11407         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
11408 another interview with the people behind
11409 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
11410 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
11411 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
11412 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
11413 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
11414 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11415 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11416
11417 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11418
11419 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
11420 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
11421 ICT in schools</p>
11422
11423 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11424 project?</strong></p>
11425
11426 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
11427 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
11428 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
11429 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
11430
11431 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11432 Edu?</strong></p>
11433
11434 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
11435 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
11436 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
11437 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
11438
11439 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11440 Edu?</strong></p>
11441
11442 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
11443 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
11444 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
11445 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
11446 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
11447 technologies in school.</p>
11448
11449 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11450
11451 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
11452 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
11453 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
11454
11455 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11456 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11457
11458 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
11459 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
11460 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
11461 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
11462
11463 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
11464 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
11465 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
11466
11467 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
11468 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
11469 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
11470 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
11471 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
11472 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
11473 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
11474 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
11475 working there.</p>
11476
11477       </div>
11478       <div class="tags">
11479
11480
11481         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11482
11483
11484       </div>
11485     </div>
11486     <div class="padding"></div>
11487
11488     <div class="entry">
11489       <div class="title">
11490         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11491       </div>
11492       <div class="date">
11493         24th June 2012
11494       </div>
11495       <div class="body">
11496         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
11497 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
11498 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
11499 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
11500 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
11501 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
11502 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
11503 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
11504 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
11505 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
11506 missing in my book.</p>
11507
11508 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
11509 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
11510 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
11511 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
11512 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
11513 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
11514 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
11515
11516       </div>
11517       <div class="tags">
11518
11519
11520         Tags: <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>.
11521
11522
11523       </div>
11524     </div>
11525     <div class="padding"></div>
11526
11527     <div class="entry">
11528       <div class="title">
11529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
11530       </div>
11531       <div class="date">
11532         11th June 2012
11533       </div>
11534       <div class="body">
11535         <p>During my work on
11536 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
11537 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
11538 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
11539 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
11540 explanation.</p>
11541
11542 <p><ul>
11543
11544 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
11545 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
11546 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
11547 system depend on tasksel tasks in
11548 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
11549 installation.</li>
11550
11551 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
11552 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
11553 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
11554 at least try to enable it for these services:
11555 <ul>
11556
11557   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
11558     quotas.</li>
11559   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
11560   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
11561   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
11562   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
11563   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
11564
11565 </ul></li>
11566
11567 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
11568 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
11569 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
11570 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
11571
11572 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
11573 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
11574 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
11575
11576 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
11577 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
11578 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
11579 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
11580 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
11581 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
11582
11583 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
11584 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
11585 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
11586 in Wheezy.
11587
11588 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
11589 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
11590 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
11591
11592 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
11593 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
11594 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
11595 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
11596
11597 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
11598 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
11599 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
11600 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
11601
11602 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
11603 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
11604 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
11605
11606 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
11607 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
11608 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
11609
11610 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
11611 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
11612 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
11613 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
11614 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
11615
11616 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
11617 <ul>
11618
11619 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
11620 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
11621 <li>and probably more?</li>
11622 </ul></li>
11623
11624 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
11625 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
11626 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
11627 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
11628 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
11629 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
11630 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
11631 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
11632
11633
11634 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
11635 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
11636 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
11637 use.</li>
11638
11639 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
11640 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
11641 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
11642 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
11643 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
11644
11645 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
11646 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
11647 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
11648 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
11649 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
11650 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
11651
11652 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
11653 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
11654 There are at least three implementations,
11655 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
11656 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
11657 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
11658 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
11659 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
11660 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
11661 given room.</li>
11662
11663 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
11664 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
11665 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
11666 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
11667 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
11668 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
11669 investigated.</li>
11670
11671 </ul></p>
11672
11673 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
11674 version.</p>
11675
11676       </div>
11677       <div class="tags">
11678
11679
11680         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11681
11682
11683       </div>
11684     </div>
11685     <div class="padding"></div>
11686
11687     <div class="entry">
11688       <div class="title">
11689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
11690       </div>
11691       <div class="date">
11692          9th June 2012
11693       </div>
11694       <div class="body">
11695         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
11696 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
11697 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
11698 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
11699 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
11700 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
11701 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
11702 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
11703 be willing to pay for.</p>
11704
11705 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
11706 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
11707 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
11708 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
11709 Orwell</a>.</p>
11710
11711       </div>
11712       <div class="tags">
11713
11714
11715         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11716
11717
11718       </div>
11719     </div>
11720     <div class="padding"></div>
11721
11722     <div class="entry">
11723       <div class="title">
11724         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
11725       </div>
11726       <div class="date">
11727          6th June 2012
11728       </div>
11729       <div class="body">
11730         <p>A few days ago
11731 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
11732 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
11733 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
11734 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
11735 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
11736 code for HP, Dell and IBM
11737 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
11738 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
11739 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
11740 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
11741 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
11742
11743 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
11744 output:
11745
11746 <blockquote><pre>
11747 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
11748 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
11749 %
11750 </pre></blockquote>
11751
11752 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
11753 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
11754 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
11755
11756       </div>
11757       <div class="tags">
11758
11759
11760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11761
11762
11763       </div>
11764     </div>
11765     <div class="padding"></div>
11766
11767     <div class="entry">
11768       <div class="title">
11769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="date">
11772          2nd June 2012
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="body">
11775         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
11776 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11777 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
11778 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
11779 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11780 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
11781
11782 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11783
11784 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
11785 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
11786 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
11787 by Angela).</p>
11788
11789 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
11790 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
11791 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
11792 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
11793 becoming an osteopath.</p>
11794
11795 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
11796 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
11797 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
11798 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
11799 skills with communication skills.</p>
11800
11801 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11802 project?</strong></p>
11803
11804 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
11805 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
11806 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
11807 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
11808 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
11809
11810 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
11811 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
11812 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
11813 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
11814 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
11815 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
11816 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
11817 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
11818 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
11819
11820 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
11821 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
11822 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
11823
11824 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
11825
11826 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
11827 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
11828 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
11829 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
11830 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
11831 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
11832 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
11833 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
11834 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
11835 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
11836 point.</p>
11837
11838 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
11839 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
11840 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
11841 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
11842 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
11843 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
11844
11845 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
11846 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
11847 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
11848 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
11849 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
11850 spare time.</p>
11851
11852 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
11853 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
11854 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
11855 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
11856 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
11857
11858 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
11859 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
11860 avoidance do exist.</p>
11861
11862 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
11863 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
11864 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
11865 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
11866 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
11867 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
11868 and probably a gain for all.</p>
11869
11870 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11871 Edu?</strong></p>
11872
11873 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
11874 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
11875 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
11876 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
11877 project communication, honest communication within the group of
11878 developers, etc.</p>
11879
11880 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11881 Edu?</strong></p>
11882
11883 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
11884
11885 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
11886 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
11887 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
11888 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
11889 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
11890 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
11891 contribute).</p>
11892
11893 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
11894 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
11895 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
11896 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
11897 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
11898 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
11899 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
11900 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
11901 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
11902 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
11903
11904 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11905
11906 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
11907
11908 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
11909 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
11910 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
11911
11912 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
11913 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
11914 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
11915 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
11916
11917 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
11918 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
11919 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
11920 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
11921 whiteboard.</p>
11922
11923 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
11924
11925 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11926 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11927
11928 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
11929 enrol people.</p>
11930
11931       </div>
11932       <div class="tags">
11933
11934
11935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11936
11937
11938       </div>
11939     </div>
11940     <div class="padding"></div>
11941
11942     <div class="entry">
11943       <div class="title">
11944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
11945       </div>
11946       <div class="date">
11947          1st June 2012
11948       </div>
11949       <div class="body">
11950         <p>A few years ago I wrote
11951 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
11952 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
11953 I have learned from colleges here at the
11954 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
11955 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
11956 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
11957 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
11958 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
11959
11960 <p><pre>
11961 use strict;
11962 use warnings;
11963 use SOAP::Lite;
11964 use Data::Dumper;
11965 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
11966 my $App = 'test';
11967 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
11968 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
11969 my $s = SOAP::Lite
11970     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
11971     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
11972     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
11973     ;
11974 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
11975     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
11976     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
11977     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
11978 );
11979 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
11980 </pre></p>
11981
11982 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
11983
11984 <p><pre>
11985 $VAR1 = {
11986           'Asset' => {
11987                      'Entitlements' => {
11988                                        'EntitlementData' => [
11989                                                             {
11990                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11991                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11992                                                               'Provider' => '',
11993                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
11994                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
11995                                                             },
11996                                                             {
11997                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
11998                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
11999                                                               'Provider' => '',
12000                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12001                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12002                                                             },
12003                                                             {
12004                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
12005                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
12006                                                               'Provider' => '',
12007                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
12008                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
12009                                                             }
12010                                                           ]
12011                                      },
12012                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
12013                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
12014                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
12015                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
12016                                           'Buid' => '2323',
12017                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
12018                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
12019                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
12020                                         }
12021                    }
12022         };
12023 </pre></p>
12024
12025 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
12026 service outside the
12027 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
12028 documentation</a>, and according to
12029 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
12030 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
12031 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
12032
12033 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
12034 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
12035
12036       </div>
12037       <div class="tags">
12038
12039
12040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12041
12042
12043       </div>
12044     </div>
12045     <div class="padding"></div>
12046
12047     <div class="entry">
12048       <div class="title">
12049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
12050       </div>
12051       <div class="date">
12052         31st May 2012
12053       </div>
12054       <div class="body">
12055         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
12056 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
12057 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
12058 running Debian Squeeze, where
12059 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
12060 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
12061 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
12062 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
12063 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
12064 another day.</p>
12065
12066 <p>After calibration, I get a
12067 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
12068 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
12069 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
12070 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
12071 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
12072 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
12073 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
12074 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
12075 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
12076 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
12077 and a simple</p>
12078
12079 <p><pre>
12080 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
12081 </pre></p>
12082
12083 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
12084 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
12085 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
12086 enough for now.</p>
12087
12088       </div>
12089       <div class="tags">
12090
12091
12092         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12093
12094
12095       </div>
12096     </div>
12097     <div class="padding"></div>
12098
12099     <div class="entry">
12100       <div class="title">
12101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
12102       </div>
12103       <div class="date">
12104         27th May 2012
12105       </div>
12106       <div class="body">
12107         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
12108 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12109 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
12110 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
12111 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
12112 since then, helping to make sure the
12113 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12114 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
12115
12116 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12117
12118 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
12119 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
12120 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
12121 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
12122 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
12123 our computer network.</p>
12124
12125 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
12126 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
12127 (4 months).</p>
12128
12129 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12130 project?</strong></p>
12131
12132 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
12133 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
12134 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
12135 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
12136 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
12137 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
12138 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
12139 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
12140 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
12141 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
12142 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
12143 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
12144 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
12145 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
12146
12147 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12148 Edu?</strong></p>
12149
12150 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
12151 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
12152 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
12153 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
12154 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
12155 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
12156 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
12157 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
12158
12159 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12160 Edu?</strong></p>
12161
12162 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
12163 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
12164 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
12165 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
12166 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
12167 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
12168 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
12169 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
12170 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
12171 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
12172 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
12173 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
12174
12175 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12176
12177 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
12178 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
12179 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
12180
12181 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12182 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12183
12184 <p><ol>
12185
12186 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
12187 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
12188 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
12189 developing.</li>
12190
12191 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
12192 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
12193 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
12194 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
12195 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
12196
12197 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
12198 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
12199 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
12200
12201 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
12202 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
12203 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
12204 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
12205
12206 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
12207 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
12208 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
12209
12210 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
12211
12212 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
12213 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
12214 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
12215 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
12216
12217 </ol></p>
12218
12219       </div>
12220       <div class="tags">
12221
12222
12223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12224
12225
12226       </div>
12227     </div>
12228     <div class="padding"></div>
12229
12230     <div class="entry">
12231       <div class="title">
12232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
12233       </div>
12234       <div class="date">
12235         26th May 2012
12236       </div>
12237       <div class="body">
12238         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
12239 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
12240 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
12241 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
12242 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
12243
12244 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
12245 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
12246 comment:</p>
12247
12248 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
12249 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
12250 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
12251 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
12252 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
12253 </blockquote></p>
12254
12255 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
12256 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
12257 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
12258 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
12259 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
12260 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
12261 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
12262 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
12263 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
12264 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
12265 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
12266 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
12267 of wasted effort.</p>
12268
12269 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
12270 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
12271 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
12272
12273 <p>See
12274 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
12275 and
12276 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
12277 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
12278 </blockquote></p>
12279
12280       </div>
12281       <div class="tags">
12282
12283
12284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12285
12286
12287       </div>
12288     </div>
12289     <div class="padding"></div>
12290
12291     <div class="entry">
12292       <div class="title">
12293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
12294       </div>
12295       <div class="date">
12296         18th May 2012
12297       </div>
12298       <div class="body">
12299         <p>In january, I
12300 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
12301 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
12302 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
12303 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
12304 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
12305 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
12306 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
12307 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
12308 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
12309 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
12310
12311 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
12312 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
12313 drivers. :)</p>
12314
12315       </div>
12316       <div class="tags">
12317
12318
12319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12320
12321
12322       </div>
12323     </div>
12324     <div class="padding"></div>
12325
12326     <div class="entry">
12327       <div class="title">
12328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
12329       </div>
12330       <div class="date">
12331         13th May 2012
12332       </div>
12333       <div class="body">
12334         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
12335 publish another interview with the people behind
12336 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
12337 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
12338 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
12339 details get right before release.
12340
12341 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12342
12343 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
12344 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
12345 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
12346 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
12347 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
12348 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
12349 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
12350 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
12351
12352 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
12353 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
12354 home since 2006.</p>
12355
12356 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12357 project?</strong></p>
12358
12359 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
12360 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
12361 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
12362 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
12363 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
12364 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
12365
12366 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
12367 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
12368 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
12369 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
12370 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
12371 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
12372 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
12373 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
12374 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
12375 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
12376 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
12377 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
12378 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
12379 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
12380 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
12381 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
12382
12383 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12384 Edu?</strong></p>
12385
12386 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
12387 for me as today.</p>
12388
12389 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
12390
12391 <p><ul>
12392
12393 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
12394 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
12395
12396 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
12397 cost.</li>
12398
12399 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
12400 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
12401 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
12402 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
12403 server</li>
12404
12405 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
12406 school.</li>
12407
12408 </ul></p>
12409
12410 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
12411 came up in this way:</p>
12412
12413 <p><ul>
12414
12415 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
12416 now.</li>
12417
12418 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
12419 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
12420 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
12421
12422 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
12423 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
12424 interfaces used in the past.</li>
12425
12426 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
12427 different needs.</li>
12428
12429 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
12430
12431 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
12432 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
12433 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
12434
12435 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
12436 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
12437
12438 </ul></p>
12439
12440 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12441 Edu?</strong></p>
12442
12443 <p><ul>
12444
12445 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
12446 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
12447 whole municipality areas.</li>
12448
12449 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
12450 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
12451 politicians.</li>
12452
12453 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
12454
12455 </ul></p>
12456
12457 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12458
12459 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
12460 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
12461 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
12462 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
12463 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
12464 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
12465
12466 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
12467 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
12468 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
12469 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
12470 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
12471
12472 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12473 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12474
12475 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
12476 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
12477 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
12478
12479       </div>
12480       <div class="tags">
12481
12482
12483         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12484
12485
12486       </div>
12487     </div>
12488     <div class="padding"></div>
12489
12490     <div class="entry">
12491       <div class="title">
12492         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
12493       </div>
12494       <div class="date">
12495         30th April 2012
12496       </div>
12497       <div class="body">
12498         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
12499 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
12500
12501 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
12502 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
12503 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
12504 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
12505 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
12506 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
12507 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
12508 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
12509 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
12510 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
12511 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
12512 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
12513 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
12514 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
12515 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
12516 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
12517
12518 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
12519 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
12520 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
12521 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
12522 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
12523 finally found a Danish supplier
12524 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
12525 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
12526 days ago.</p>
12527
12528 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
12529 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
12530 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
12531 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
12532 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
12533 toys.</p>
12534
12535       </div>
12536       <div class="tags">
12537
12538
12539         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12540
12541
12542       </div>
12543     </div>
12544     <div class="padding"></div>
12545
12546     <div class="entry">
12547       <div class="title">
12548         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
12549       </div>
12550       <div class="date">
12551         26th April 2012
12552       </div>
12553       <div class="body">
12554         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
12555 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
12556 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
12557 that the video editor application included with
12558 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
12559 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
12560 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
12561
12562 <p><blockquote>
12563 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
12564 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
12565 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
12566 </blockquote></p>
12567
12568 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
12569
12570 <p><blockquote>
12571 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
12572 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
12573 </blockquote></p>
12574
12575 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
12576 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
12577 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
12578 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
12579 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
12580 video.  AMR is
12581 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
12582 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
12583 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
12584 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
12585 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
12586 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
12587 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
12588
12589 <p>I know why I prefer
12590 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
12591 standards</a> also for video.</p>
12592
12593       </div>
12594       <div class="tags">
12595
12596
12597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12598
12599
12600       </div>
12601     </div>
12602     <div class="padding"></div>
12603
12604     <div class="entry">
12605       <div class="title">
12606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
12607       </div>
12608       <div class="date">
12609         19th April 2012
12610       </div>
12611       <div class="body">
12612         <p>Here in Norway, the
12613 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
12614 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
12615 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
12616 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
12617 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
12618 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
12619 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
12620 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
12621 on the same level.</p>
12622
12623 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
12624 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
12625 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
12626 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
12627 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
12628 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
12629 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
12630 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
12631 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
12632 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
12633 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
12634 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
12635 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
12636 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
12637 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
12638 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
12639 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
12640 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
12641
12642 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
12643 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
12644 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
12645 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
12646 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
12647 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
12648 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
12649 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
12650
12651 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
12652 from Simon Phipps
12653 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
12654 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
12655
12656 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
12657 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
12658 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
12659 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
12660 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
12661 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
12662 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
12663 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
12664 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
12665
12666       </div>
12667       <div class="tags">
12668
12669
12670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12671
12672
12673       </div>
12674     </div>
12675     <div class="padding"></div>
12676
12677     <div class="entry">
12678       <div class="title">
12679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
12680       </div>
12681       <div class="date">
12682         15th April 2012
12683       </div>
12684       <div class="body">
12685         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12686 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
12687 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
12688 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
12689 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
12690 up in the recently released
12691 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12692 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12693
12694 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12695
12696 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
12697 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
12698 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
12699 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
12700 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
12701 information technology and science/technology.</p>
12702
12703 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12704 project?</strong></p>
12705
12706 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
12707 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
12708 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
12709 contributing.</p>
12710
12711 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12712 Edu?</strong></p>
12713
12714 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
12715 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
12716 Debian Project!</p>
12717
12718 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12719 Edu?</strong></p>
12720
12721 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
12722 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
12723 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
12724 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
12725 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
12726 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
12727 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
12728
12729 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
12730 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
12731
12732 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12733
12734 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
12735 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
12736 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
12737 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
12738
12739 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12740 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12741
12742 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
12743 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
12744 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
12745 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
12746 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
12747 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
12748 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
12749
12750 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
12751 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
12752 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
12753 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
12754 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
12755 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
12756 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
12757 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
12758
12759       </div>
12760       <div class="tags">
12761
12762
12763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12764
12765
12766       </div>
12767     </div>
12768     <div class="padding"></div>
12769
12770     <div class="entry">
12771       <div class="title">
12772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
12773       </div>
12774       <div class="date">
12775          8th April 2012
12776       </div>
12777       <div class="body">
12778         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
12779 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
12780 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
12781 contributor to the
12782 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12783 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
12784
12785 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12786
12787 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
12788 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
12789
12790 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12791 project?</strong></p>
12792
12793 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
12794 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
12795 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
12796 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
12797 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
12798 "localisation".</p>
12799
12800 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12801 Edu?</strong></p>
12802
12803 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12804 Edu?</strong></p>
12805
12806 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
12807 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
12808 education system.</p>
12809
12810 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
12811 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
12812 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
12813 money on the latest hardware.</p>
12814
12815 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12816
12817 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
12818 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
12819 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
12820
12821 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12822 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12823
12824 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
12825 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
12826 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
12827
12828       </div>
12829       <div class="tags">
12830
12831
12832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12833
12834
12835       </div>
12836     </div>
12837     <div class="padding"></div>
12838
12839     <div class="entry">
12840       <div class="title">
12841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
12842       </div>
12843       <div class="date">
12844          6th April 2012
12845       </div>
12846       <div class="body">
12847         <p>Recently I have spent time with
12848 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
12849 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12850 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
12851 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
12852 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
12853 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
12854 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
12855 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
12856
12857 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
12858 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
12859 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
12860 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
12861 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
12862 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
12863 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
12864 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
12865
12866 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
12867 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
12868 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
12869 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
12870 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
12871 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
12872 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
12873 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
12874
12875 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
12876 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
12877 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
12878 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
12879 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
12880 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
12881 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
12882 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
12883 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
12884 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
12885
12886 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
12887 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
12888 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
12889 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
12890
12891 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
12892 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
12893
12894       </div>
12895       <div class="tags">
12896
12897
12898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12899
12900
12901       </div>
12902     </div>
12903     <div class="padding"></div>
12904
12905     <div class="entry">
12906       <div class="title">
12907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
12908       </div>
12909       <div class="date">
12910          5th April 2012
12911       </div>
12912       <div class="body">
12913         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
12914 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
12915 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
12916 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
12917 for schools.  Check out his article
12918 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
12919 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
12920
12921       </div>
12922       <div class="tags">
12923
12924
12925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12926
12927
12928       </div>
12929     </div>
12930     <div class="padding"></div>
12931
12932     <div class="entry">
12933       <div class="title">
12934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
12935       </div>
12936       <div class="date">
12937          1st April 2012
12938       </div>
12939       <div class="body">
12940         <p>Germany is a core area for the
12941 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12942 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
12943 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
12944
12945 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12946
12947 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
12948 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
12949 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
12950 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
12951 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
12952 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
12953 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
12954 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
12955
12956 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
12957 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
12958 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
12959 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
12960 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
12961 the end of April this year.</p>
12962
12963 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12964 project?</strong></p>
12965
12966 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
12967 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
12968 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
12969 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
12970 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
12971 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
12972 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
12973 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
12974 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
12975 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
12976 Skolelinux.</p>
12977
12978 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
12979 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
12980 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
12981 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
12982 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
12983 the admin teachers.</p>
12984
12985 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12986 Edu?</strong></p>
12987
12988 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
12989 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
12990 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
12991
12992 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
12993 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
12994 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
12995 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
12996 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
12997
12998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12999 Edu?</strong></p>
13000
13001 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
13002
13003 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13004
13005 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
13006 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
13007 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
13008 LibreOffice.</p>
13009
13010 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13011 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13012
13013 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
13014 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
13015 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
13016
13017       </div>
13018       <div class="tags">
13019
13020
13021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13022
13023
13024       </div>
13025     </div>
13026     <div class="padding"></div>
13027
13028     <div class="entry">
13029       <div class="title">
13030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
13031       </div>
13032       <div class="date">
13033         25th March 2012
13034       </div>
13035       <div class="body">
13036         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13037
13038 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
13039 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
13040 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
13041 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
13042 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
13043 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
13044 and download as a
13045 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
13046 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13047
13048 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13049   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
13050     <p>Download video as
13051       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13052 </video></p>
13053
13054       </div>
13055       <div class="tags">
13056
13057
13058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13059
13060
13061       </div>
13062     </div>
13063     <div class="padding"></div>
13064
13065     <div class="entry">
13066       <div class="title">
13067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
13068       </div>
13069       <div class="date">
13070         19th March 2012
13071       </div>
13072       <div class="body">
13073         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13074 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
13075 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13076 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
13077 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
13078
13079 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13080
13081 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
13082 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
13083 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
13084 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
13085 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
13086 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
13087 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
13088 installations.</p>
13089
13090 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13091 project?</strong></p>
13092
13093 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
13094 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
13095 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
13096 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
13097 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
13098 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
13099 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
13100 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
13101 these things we decided to try it.</p>
13102
13103 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13104 Edu?</strong></p>
13105
13106 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
13107 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
13108 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
13109 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
13110 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
13111 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
13112 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
13113 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
13114
13115 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13116 Edu?</strong></p>
13117
13118 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
13119 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
13120 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
13121 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
13122 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
13123
13124 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13125
13126 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
13127 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
13128 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
13129 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
13130 that counts...)</p>
13131
13132 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13133 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13134
13135 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
13136 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
13137 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
13138 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
13139 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
13140 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
13141 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
13142 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
13143 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
13144 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
13145 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
13146
13147 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
13148 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
13149 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
13150
13151       </div>
13152       <div class="tags">
13153
13154
13155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13156
13157
13158       </div>
13159     </div>
13160     <div class="padding"></div>
13161
13162     <div class="entry">
13163       <div class="title">
13164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
13165       </div>
13166       <div class="date">
13167         16th March 2012
13168       </div>
13169       <div class="body">
13170         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
13171 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
13172 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
13173 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
13174
13175 <ol>
13176
13177 <li>The documentation is written in a
13178 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
13179 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
13180 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
13181 docbook XML.</li>
13182
13183 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
13184 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
13185 with the translated text.</li>
13186
13187 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
13188 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
13189 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
13190 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
13191 images.</li>
13192
13193 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
13194 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
13195
13196 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
13197 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
13198
13199 </ol>
13200
13201 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
13202 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
13203 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
13204 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
13205 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
13206
13207 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
13208 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
13209 package</a>.</p>
13210
13211       </div>
13212       <div class="tags">
13213
13214
13215         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13216
13217
13218       </div>
13219     </div>
13220     <div class="padding"></div>
13221
13222     <div class="entry">
13223       <div class="title">
13224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
13225       </div>
13226       <div class="date">
13227         11th March 2012
13228       </div>
13229       <div class="body">
13230         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
13231 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
13232 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13233 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
13234 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
13235 you have not done so already.</p>
13236
13237 <p>I plan to present the new version at
13238 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
13239 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
13240 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
13241
13242       </div>
13243       <div class="tags">
13244
13245
13246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13247
13248
13249       </div>
13250     </div>
13251     <div class="padding"></div>
13252
13253     <div class="entry">
13254       <div class="title">
13255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
13256       </div>
13257       <div class="date">
13258          9th March 2012
13259       </div>
13260       <div class="body">
13261         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
13262 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
13263 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
13264 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
13265 more international audience.</p>
13266
13267 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
13268 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
13269 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
13270 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
13271 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
13272 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
13273 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
13274
13275
13276 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13277
13278 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
13279 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
13280 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
13281 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
13282 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
13283 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
13284 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
13285 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
13286 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
13287 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
13288 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
13289
13290 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13291 project?</strong></p>
13292
13293 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
13294 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
13295 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
13296 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
13297 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
13298 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
13299 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
13300 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
13301 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
13302 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
13303 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
13304 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
13305 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
13306
13307 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13308 Edu?</strong></p>
13309
13310 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
13311 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
13312 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
13313 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
13314 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
13315 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
13316 Japan.</p>
13317
13318 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13319 Edu?</strong></p>
13320
13321 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
13322 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
13323 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
13324 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
13325 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
13326 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
13327 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
13328 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
13329 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
13330 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
13331 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
13332 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
13333 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
13334 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
13335 help.</p>
13336
13337 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13338
13339 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
13340 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
13341 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
13342 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
13343 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
13344 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
13345 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
13346 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
13347 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
13348 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
13349 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
13350
13351 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13352 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13353
13354 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
13355 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
13356 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
13357 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
13358 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
13359 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
13360 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
13361 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
13362 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
13363 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
13364 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
13365 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
13366
13367       </div>
13368       <div class="tags">
13369
13370
13371         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13372
13373
13374       </div>
13375     </div>
13376     <div class="padding"></div>
13377
13378     <div class="entry">
13379       <div class="title">
13380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
13381       </div>
13382       <div class="date">
13383          7th March 2012
13384       </div>
13385       <div class="body">
13386         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
13387
13388 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
13389 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
13390 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
13391 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
13392 download as a
13393 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
13394 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
13395
13396 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
13397   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
13398     <p>Download video as
13399       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
13400 </video></p>
13401
13402       </div>
13403       <div class="tags">
13404
13405
13406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13407
13408
13409       </div>
13410     </div>
13411     <div class="padding"></div>
13412
13413     <div class="entry">
13414       <div class="title">
13415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13416       </div>
13417       <div class="date">
13418          4th March 2012
13419       </div>
13420       <div class="body">
13421         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
13422 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13423 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13424 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
13425 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
13426 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13427
13428       </div>
13429       <div class="tags">
13430
13431
13432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13433
13434
13435       </div>
13436     </div>
13437     <div class="padding"></div>
13438
13439     <div class="entry">
13440       <div class="title">
13441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
13442       </div>
13443       <div class="date">
13444          3rd March 2012
13445       </div>
13446       <div class="body">
13447         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13448 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
13449 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
13450 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
13451 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
13452 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
13453 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
13454 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
13455 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
13456 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
13457 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
13458 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
13459 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
13460 year...</p>
13461
13462 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
13463 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
13464 name,
13465 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
13466 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
13467 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
13468 mean). I've been following
13469 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
13470 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
13471 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
13472 Check it out. :)</p>
13473
13474       </div>
13475       <div class="tags">
13476
13477
13478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13479
13480
13481       </div>
13482     </div>
13483     <div class="padding"></div>
13484
13485     <div class="entry">
13486       <div class="title">
13487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13488       </div>
13489       <div class="date">
13490         27th February 2012
13491       </div>
13492       <div class="body">
13493         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
13494 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13495 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
13496 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
13497 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
13498 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
13499 need a software solution for your school.</p>
13500
13501       </div>
13502       <div class="tags">
13503
13504
13505         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13506
13507
13508       </div>
13509     </div>
13510     <div class="padding"></div>
13511
13512     <div class="entry">
13513       <div class="title">
13514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13515       </div>
13516       <div class="date">
13517         19th February 2012
13518       </div>
13519       <div class="body">
13520         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
13521 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
13522 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13523 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
13524 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
13525 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
13526 solution for your school.</p>
13527
13528       </div>
13529       <div class="tags">
13530
13531
13532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13533
13534
13535       </div>
13536     </div>
13537     <div class="padding"></div>
13538
13539     <div class="entry">
13540       <div class="title">
13541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
13542       </div>
13543       <div class="date">
13544         14th February 2012
13545       </div>
13546       <div class="body">
13547         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
13548 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
13549 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
13550 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
13551 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
13552 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
13553 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
13554 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
13555 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
13556
13557 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
13558 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
13559 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
13560 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
13561 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
13562
13563 <blockquote><pre>
13564 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
13565 do
13566     printf "Failed disk $d: "
13567     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
13568 done
13569 </blockquote></pre>
13570
13571 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
13572 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
13573
13574 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
13575
13576 <blockquote><pre>
13577 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13578 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
13579 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
13580 </blockquote></pre>
13581
13582 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
13583 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
13584 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
13585 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
13586 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
13587 mounted inside my box.</p>
13588
13589 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
13590 Software RAID in the
13591 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
13592 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
13593 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
13594 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
13595 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
13596 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
13597
13598       </div>
13599       <div class="tags">
13600
13601
13602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
13603
13604
13605       </div>
13606     </div>
13607     <div class="padding"></div>
13608
13609     <div class="entry">
13610       <div class="title">
13611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
13612       </div>
13613       <div class="date">
13614         13th February 2012
13615       </div>
13616       <div class="body">
13617         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
13618 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
13619 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
13620 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
13621 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
13622 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
13623 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
13624 change the global proxy setting by editing
13625 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
13626 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
13627
13628 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
13629 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
13630 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
13631
13632 <blockquote><pre>
13633 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
13634 {
13635    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
13636        isPlainHostName(host) ||
13637        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
13638       return "DIRECT";
13639    else
13640       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
13641 }
13642 </pre></blockquote>
13643
13644 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
13645
13646 <blockquote><pre>
13647 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13648 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
13649 </pre></blockquote>
13650
13651 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
13652 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
13653 would be used for
13654 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
13655 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
13656 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
13657 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
13658 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
13659 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
13660 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
13661 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
13662 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
13663 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
13664
13665 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
13666 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
13667 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
13668 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
13669 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
13670 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
13671
13672 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
13673 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
13674 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
13675 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
13676 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
13677 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
13678 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
13679 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
13680 the network setup changes.</p>
13681
13682 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
13683 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
13684 draft</a> and a
13685 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
13686 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
13687
13688       </div>
13689       <div class="tags">
13690
13691
13692         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13693
13694
13695       </div>
13696     </div>
13697     <div class="padding"></div>
13698
13699     <div class="entry">
13700       <div class="title">
13701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
13702       </div>
13703       <div class="date">
13704          5th February 2012
13705       </div>
13706       <div class="body">
13707         <p>Since the Lenny version of
13708 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
13709 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
13710 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
13711 in the morning.  This is done using the
13712 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
13713
13714 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
13715 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
13716 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
13717 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
13718 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
13719 the
13720 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
13721 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
13722 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
13723 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
13724 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
13725
13726 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
13727 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
13728 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
13729 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
13730 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
13731 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
13732 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
13733
13734 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
13735 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
13736 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
13737 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
13738 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
13739
13740       </div>
13741       <div class="tags">
13742
13743
13744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13745
13746
13747       </div>
13748     </div>
13749     <div class="padding"></div>
13750
13751     <div class="entry">
13752       <div class="title">
13753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13754       </div>
13755       <div class="date">
13756          4th February 2012
13757       </div>
13758       <div class="body">
13759         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
13760 publish the third beta version of
13761 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13762 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
13763 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
13764 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
13765 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
13766 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
13767 on the project announcement list.</p>
13768
13769 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
13770 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
13771
13772 <ul>
13773
13774 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
13775   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
13776   the installation.</li>
13777
13778 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
13779   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
13780
13781 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
13782   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
13783   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
13784
13785 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
13786   for the local system administrator is created during installation
13787   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
13788   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
13789   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
13790   up to date on the system.</li>
13791
13792 </ul>
13793
13794 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
13795 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
13796 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
13797 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
13798
13799 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
13800 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
13801 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
13802 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
13803 will see you there?</p>
13804
13805       </div>
13806       <div class="tags">
13807
13808
13809         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13810
13811
13812       </div>
13813     </div>
13814     <div class="padding"></div>
13815
13816     <div class="entry">
13817       <div class="title">
13818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13819       </div>
13820       <div class="date">
13821         27th January 2012
13822       </div>
13823       <div class="body">
13824         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
13825 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
13826 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
13827 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
13828 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
13829 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
13830 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
13831
13832 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
13833 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
13834 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
13835 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
13836 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
13837 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
13838 not taken care of by this.</p>
13839
13840 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
13841 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
13842 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
13843 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
13844 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
13845 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
13846 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
13847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
13848 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
13849 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
13850 firmware packages.</p>
13851
13852 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
13853 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
13854 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
13855 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
13856 initrd with extra firmware, the
13857 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
13858 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
13859 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
13860
13861 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
13862 network cards working.  For this,
13863 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
13864 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
13865 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
13866
13867 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
13868 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
13869 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
13870
13871 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
13872 try.</p>
13873
13874       </div>
13875       <div class="tags">
13876
13877
13878         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13879
13880
13881       </div>
13882     </div>
13883     <div class="padding"></div>
13884
13885     <div class="entry">
13886       <div class="title">
13887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13888       </div>
13889       <div class="date">
13890         25th January 2012
13891       </div>
13892       <div class="body">
13893         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
13894 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
13895 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
13896 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
13897 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
13898
13899 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
13900 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
13901 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
13902 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
13903 this is done, log on to the central server and run
13904 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
13905 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
13906 will look similar to this:</p>
13907
13908 <p><blockquote><pre>
13909 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
13910 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
13911 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
13912
13913 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
13914
13915 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13916 enter password: *******
13917 %
13918 </pre></blockquote></p>
13919
13920 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
13921 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
13922 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
13923 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
13924 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
13925 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
13926 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
13927 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
13928 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
13929 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
13930 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
13931 automatically.</p>
13932
13933 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
13934 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
13935
13936 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
13937 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
13938 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
13939
13940       </div>
13941       <div class="tags">
13942
13943
13944         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13945
13946
13947       </div>
13948     </div>
13949     <div class="padding"></div>
13950
13951     <div class="entry">
13952       <div class="title">
13953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
13954       </div>
13955       <div class="date">
13956         10th January 2012
13957       </div>
13958       <div class="body">
13959         <p>In the Squeeze version of
13960 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
13961 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
13962 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
13963 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
13964 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
13965 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
13966 first time.</p>
13967
13968 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
13969 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
13970 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
13971 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
13972
13973 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
13974 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
13975 new setting.</p>
13976
13977 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
13978 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
13979 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
13980
13981       </div>
13982       <div class="tags">
13983
13984
13985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13986
13987
13988       </div>
13989     </div>
13990     <div class="padding"></div>
13991
13992     <div class="entry">
13993       <div class="title">
13994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
13995       </div>
13996       <div class="date">
13997          7th January 2012
13998       </div>
13999       <div class="body">
14000         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
14001 the second beta version of
14002 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
14003 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
14004 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
14005 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
14006 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
14007 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
14008 on the project announcement list.</p>
14009
14010       </div>
14011       <div class="tags">
14012
14013
14014         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14015
14016
14017       </div>
14018     </div>
14019     <div class="padding"></div>
14020
14021     <div class="entry">
14022       <div class="title">
14023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
14024       </div>
14025       <div class="date">
14026          3rd January 2012
14027       </div>
14028       <div class="body">
14029         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
14030 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
14031 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
14032 interesting.</p>
14033
14034 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
14035 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
14036 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
14037 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
14038 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
14039 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
14040 wrap up its tasks.</p>
14041
14042 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
14043 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
14044 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
14045 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
14046 because I was typing.</P>
14047
14048 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
14049 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
14050 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
14051 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
14052 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
14053 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
14054 generate entropy.</p>
14055
14056 <p>The fix is in
14057 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
14058 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
14059 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
14060 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
14061
14062       </div>
14063       <div class="tags">
14064
14065
14066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14067
14068
14069       </div>
14070     </div>
14071     <div class="padding"></div>
14072
14073     <div class="entry">
14074       <div class="title">
14075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
14076       </div>
14077       <div class="date">
14078         21st November 2011
14079       </div>
14080       <div class="body">
14081         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
14082 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
14083 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
14084 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
14085 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
14086 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
14087 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
14088 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
14089 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
14090 the tools to do so.</p>
14091
14092 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
14093 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
14094 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
14095 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
14096
14097 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
14098 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
14099 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
14100 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
14101 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
14102 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
14103 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
14104 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
14105
14106 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
14107 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
14108 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
14109
14110 <p><pre>
14111 #!/usr/bin/perl
14112 use strict;
14113 use warnings;
14114 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
14115 BEGIN {
14116     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
14117     my %rhelmodules = (
14118         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
14119         );
14120     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
14121         eval "use $module;";
14122         if ($@) {
14123             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
14124             system("yum install -y $pkg");
14125             eval "use $module;";
14126         }
14127     }
14128 }
14129 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
14130
14131 upgrade_dell();
14132
14133 exit 0;
14134
14135 sub run_firmware_script {
14136     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
14137     unless ($script) {
14138         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
14139         exit 1
14140     }
14141     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
14142
14143     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
14144         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
14145     } else {
14146         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
14147     }
14148 }
14149
14150 sub run_firmware_scripts {
14151     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
14152     # Run firmware packages
14153     for my $dir (@dirs) {
14154         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
14155         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
14156         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
14157             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
14158             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
14159         }
14160         closedir $dh;
14161     }
14162 }
14163
14164 sub download {
14165     my $url = shift;
14166     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
14167     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
14168 }
14169
14170 sub upgrade_dell {
14171     my @dirs;
14172     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14173     chomp $product;
14174
14175     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
14176
14177         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
14178         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
14179
14180         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
14181             CLEANUP => 1
14182             );
14183         chdir($tmpdir);
14184         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
14185         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
14186         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
14187         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
14188         my $fwopts = "-q";
14189         if (@paths) {
14190             for my $url (@paths) {
14191                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
14192             }
14193             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
14194         } else {
14195             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14196             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14197         }
14198         chdir('/');
14199     } else {
14200         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
14201         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
14202     }
14203 }
14204
14205 sub fetch_dell_fw {
14206     my $path = shift;
14207     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
14208     download($url);
14209 }
14210
14211 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
14212 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
14213 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
14214 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
14215     my $filename = shift;
14216
14217     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
14218     chomp $product;
14219     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
14220
14221     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
14222
14223     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
14224     my @paths;
14225     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
14226         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
14227         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
14228         my $oscode;
14229         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
14230             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
14231         } else {
14232             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
14233         }
14234         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
14235         {
14236             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
14237         }
14238     }
14239     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
14240         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
14241
14242         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
14243         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
14244
14245         my $cpath = $component->{path};
14246         for my $path (@paths) {
14247             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
14248                 push(@paths, $cpath);
14249             }
14250         }
14251     }
14252     return @paths;
14253 }
14254 </pre>
14255
14256 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
14257 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
14258 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
14259 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
14260 outdated.</p>
14261
14262       </div>
14263       <div class="tags">
14264
14265
14266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14267
14268
14269       </div>
14270     </div>
14271     <div class="padding"></div>
14272
14273     <div class="entry">
14274       <div class="title">
14275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
14276       </div>
14277       <div class="date">
14278          7th October 2011
14279       </div>
14280       <div class="body">
14281         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
14282 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
14283 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
14284 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
14285 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
14286 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
14287 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
14288 models.</p>
14289
14290 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
14291 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
14292 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
14293 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
14294
14295 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
14296 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
14297 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
14298 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
14299 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
14300 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
14301 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
14302 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
14303 distributed.</p>
14304
14305 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
14306
14307 <ul>
14308
14309 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
14310   other relevant equipment.</li>
14311
14312 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
14313
14314 </ul>
14315
14316 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
14317 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
14318 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
14319 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
14320 books available.</p>
14321
14322 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
14323 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
14324 libraries. :)</p>
14325
14326       </div>
14327       <div class="tags">
14328
14329
14330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
14331
14332
14333       </div>
14334     </div>
14335     <div class="padding"></div>
14336
14337     <div class="entry">
14338       <div class="title">
14339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
14340       </div>
14341       <div class="date">
14342         17th September 2011
14343       </div>
14344       <div class="body">
14345         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
14346 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
14347 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
14348 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
14349 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
14350 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
14351 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
14352 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
14353
14354 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
14355
14356 <blockquote><pre>
14357 #!/bin/sh
14358 # apt-get install lsdvd
14359 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14360 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
14361 </pre></blockquote>
14362
14363 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
14364 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
14365 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
14366 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
14367
14368 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
14369 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
14370 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
14371 back as an ISO.
14372
14373 <blockquote><pre>
14374 #!/bin/sh
14375 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
14376 set -e
14377 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
14378 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
14379 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
14380 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
14381 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
14382 </pre></blockquote>
14383
14384 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
14385
14386 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
14387 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
14388 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
14389 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
14390 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
14391
14392 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
14393 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
14394 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
14395 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
14396 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
14397 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
14398
14399       </div>
14400       <div class="tags">
14401
14402
14403         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14404
14405
14406       </div>
14407     </div>
14408     <div class="padding"></div>
14409
14410     <div class="entry">
14411       <div class="title">
14412         <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>
14413       </div>
14414       <div class="date">
14415          4th August 2011
14416       </div>
14417       <div class="body">
14418         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
14419 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
14420 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
14421 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
14422 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
14423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
14424 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
14425 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
14426 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
14427
14428 <p><blockquote>
14429 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
14430 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
14431 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
14432 </blockquote></p>
14433
14434 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
14435 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
14436 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
14437 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
14438 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
14439 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
14440 hard to explain.</p>
14441
14442 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
14443 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
14444 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
14445 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
14446 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
14447 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
14448 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
14449 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
14450 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
14451 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
14452 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
14453 mode).</p>
14454
14455 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
14456 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
14457 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
14458 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
14459 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
14460 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
14461 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
14462 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
14463 after visiting single user mode.</p>
14464
14465 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
14466 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
14467 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
14468 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
14469 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
14470 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
14471 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
14472 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
14473
14474 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
14475 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
14476 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
14477
14478       </div>
14479       <div class="tags">
14480
14481
14482         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>.
14483
14484
14485       </div>
14486     </div>
14487     <div class="padding"></div>
14488
14489     <div class="entry">
14490       <div class="title">
14491         <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>
14492       </div>
14493       <div class="date">
14494         30th July 2011
14495       </div>
14496       <div class="body">
14497         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
14498 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
14499 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
14500 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
14501 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
14502 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
14503 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
14504 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
14505 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
14506 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
14507 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
14508 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
14509 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
14510
14511 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
14512 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
14513 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
14514 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
14515 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
14516 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
14517 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
14518 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
14519 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
14520
14521 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
14522 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
14523 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
14524 is presented.</p>
14525
14526 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
14527 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
14528 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
14529 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
14530 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
14531 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
14532 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
14533 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
14534 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
14535 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
14536 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
14537 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
14538 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
14539 find time to push this forward.</p>
14540
14541       </div>
14542       <div class="tags">
14543
14544
14545         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>.
14546
14547
14548       </div>
14549     </div>
14550     <div class="padding"></div>
14551
14552     <div class="entry">
14553       <div class="title">
14554         <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>
14555       </div>
14556       <div class="date">
14557         29th July 2011
14558       </div>
14559       <div class="body">
14560         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
14561 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
14562 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
14563 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
14564 issues.</p>
14565
14566 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
14567 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
14568 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
14569
14570 <ol>
14571
14572 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
14573 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
14574 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
14575 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
14576 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
14577 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
14578 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
14579 Debian.</li>
14580
14581 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
14582 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
14583 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
14584 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
14585 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
14586 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
14587 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
14588 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
14589 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
14590 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
14591 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
14592 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
14593 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
14594
14595 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
14596 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
14597 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
14598 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
14599 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
14600 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
14601 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
14602 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
14603 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
14604 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
14605
14606 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
14607 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
14608 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
14609 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
14610 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
14611 latter behaviour.</li>
14612
14613 </ol>
14614
14615 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
14616 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
14617 it do not matter much.</p>
14618
14619 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
14620 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
14621 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
14622
14623       </div>
14624       <div class="tags">
14625
14626
14627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14628
14629
14630       </div>
14631     </div>
14632     <div class="padding"></div>
14633
14634     <div class="entry">
14635       <div class="title">
14636         <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>
14637       </div>
14638       <div class="date">
14639         26th July 2011
14640       </div>
14641       <div class="body">
14642         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
14643 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
14644 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
14645 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
14646 security support for a few years.</p>
14647
14648 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
14649 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
14650 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
14651 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
14652 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
14653 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
14654 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
14655 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
14656 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
14657 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
14658 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
14659 easier in the future.</p>
14660
14661 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
14662 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
14663 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
14664 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
14665 do not have time for.</p>
14666
14667       </div>
14668       <div class="tags">
14669
14670
14671         Tags: <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>.
14672
14673
14674       </div>
14675     </div>
14676     <div class="padding"></div>
14677
14678     <div class="entry">
14679       <div class="title">
14680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
14681       </div>
14682       <div class="date">
14683         20th June 2011
14684       </div>
14685       <div class="body">
14686         <p>Reading
14687 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
14688 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
14689 parts of the
14690 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
14691 and
14692 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
14693 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
14694 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
14695 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
14696
14697       </div>
14698       <div class="tags">
14699
14700
14701         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
14702
14703
14704       </div>
14705     </div>
14706     <div class="padding"></div>
14707
14708     <div class="entry">
14709       <div class="title">
14710         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
14711       </div>
14712       <div class="date">
14713         30th April 2011
14714       </div>
14715       <div class="body">
14716         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
14717 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
14718 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
14719 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
14720 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
14721 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
14722 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
14723 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
14724 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
14725 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
14726
14727 <p>Where is it?  Visit
14728 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
14729 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
14730 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
14731 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
14732
14733       </div>
14734       <div class="tags">
14735
14736
14737         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
14738
14739
14740       </div>
14741     </div>
14742     <div class="padding"></div>
14743
14744     <div class="entry">
14745       <div class="title">
14746         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
14747       </div>
14748       <div class="date">
14749         29th April 2011
14750       </div>
14751       <div class="body">
14752         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
14753 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
14754 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
14755 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
14756 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
14757 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
14758 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
14759 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
14760 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
14761 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
14762 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
14763 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
14764 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
14765
14766 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
14767 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
14768 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
14769 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
14770 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
14771 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
14772 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
14773 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
14774 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
14775 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
14776 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
14777 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
14778 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
14779
14780 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
14781 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
14782 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
14783 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
14784 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
14785 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
14786 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
14787 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
14788 it.</p>
14789
14790 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
14791 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
14792 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
14793 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
14794 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
14795 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
14796 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
14797
14798 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
14799 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
14800 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
14801 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
14802 and range= options.</p>
14803
14804 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
14805 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
14806 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
14807 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
14808 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
14809 to best handle this.  I've noticed
14810 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
14811 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
14812 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
14813 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
14814
14815 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
14816 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
14817 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
14818 discussions instead of only
14819 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
14820 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
14821 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
14822 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
14823 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
14824 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
14825
14826       </div>
14827       <div class="tags">
14828
14829
14830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
14831
14832
14833       </div>
14834     </div>
14835     <div class="padding"></div>
14836
14837     <div class="entry">
14838       <div class="title">
14839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
14840       </div>
14841       <div class="date">
14842          6th April 2011
14843       </div>
14844       <div class="body">
14845         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
14846 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
14847 A few days ago the project
14848 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
14849 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
14850 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
14851 into Gnash.</p>
14852
14853       </div>
14854       <div class="tags">
14855
14856
14857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14858
14859
14860       </div>
14861     </div>
14862     <div class="padding"></div>
14863
14864     <div class="entry">
14865       <div class="title">
14866         <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>
14867       </div>
14868       <div class="date">
14869          3rd April 2011
14870       </div>
14871       <div class="body">
14872         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
14873 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
14874 update in English.</p>
14875
14876 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
14877 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
14878 of the British service
14879 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
14880 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
14881 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
14882 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
14883 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
14884 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
14885 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
14886 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
14887 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
14888 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
14889 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
14890 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
14891 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
14892
14893 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
14894 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
14895 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
14896 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
14897 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
14898 public infrastructure.</p>
14899
14900 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
14901 such service?</p>
14902
14903       </div>
14904       <div class="tags">
14905
14906
14907         Tags: <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>.
14908
14909
14910       </div>
14911     </div>
14912     <div class="padding"></div>
14913
14914     <div class="entry">
14915       <div class="title">
14916         <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>
14917       </div>
14918       <div class="date">
14919         28th January 2011
14920       </div>
14921       <div class="body">
14922         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
14923 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
14924 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
14925 available on the Internet, and check our locally
14926 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
14927 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
14928 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
14929 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
14930 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
14931 out which security holes were present in our free software
14932 collection.</p>
14933
14934 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
14935 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
14936 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
14937 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
14938 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
14939 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
14940 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
14941 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
14942 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
14943 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
14944 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
14945 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
14946 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
14947 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
14948 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
14949 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
14950
14951 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
14952 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
14953 check out, one could look up
14954 <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
14955 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
14956 The most recent one is
14957 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
14958 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
14959 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
14960
14961 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
14962 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
14963 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
14964 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
14965 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
14966 security issues out.</p>
14967
14968 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
14969 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
14970 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
14971 RHEL is providing
14972 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
14973 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
14974 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
14975
14976 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
14977 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
14978 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
14979 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
14980 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
14981 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
14982 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
14983 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
14984 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
14985 established soon.</p>
14986
14987 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
14988 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
14989 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
14990 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
14991 for their packages.</p>
14992
14993       </div>
14994       <div class="tags">
14995
14996
14997         Tags: <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>.
14998
14999
15000       </div>
15001     </div>
15002     <div class="padding"></div>
15003
15004     <div class="entry">
15005       <div class="title">
15006         <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>
15007       </div>
15008       <div class="date">
15009         23rd January 2011
15010       </div>
15011       <div class="body">
15012         <p>In the
15013 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
15014 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
15015 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
15016 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
15017 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
15018 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
15019 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
15020 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
15021 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
15022 one of my machines like this:</p>
15023
15024 <pre>
15025 loaded modules:
15026 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
15027 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
15028 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
15029 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
15030 10de:03ec pata_amd
15031 10de:03f6 sata_nv
15032 1022:1103 k8temp
15033 109e:036e bttv
15034 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
15035 11ab:4364 sky2
15036 </pre>
15037
15038 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
15039 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
15040
15041 <pre>
15042 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
15043     echo loaded pci modules:
15044     (
15045         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
15046         for address in * ; do
15047             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15048                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15049                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15050                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15051                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
15052                     echo "$id $module"
15053                 fi
15054             fi
15055         done
15056     )
15057     echo
15058 fi
15059 </pre>
15060
15061 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
15062 mappings:</p>
15063
15064 <pre>
15065 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
15066     echo loaded usb modules:
15067     (
15068         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
15069         for address in * ; do
15070             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
15071                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
15072                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
15073                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
15074                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
15075                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
15076                         echo "$id $module"
15077                     fi
15078                 fi
15079             fi
15080         done
15081     )
15082     echo
15083 fi
15084 </pre>
15085
15086 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
15087 well.</p>
15088
15089       </div>
15090       <div class="tags">
15091
15092
15093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15094
15095
15096       </div>
15097     </div>
15098     <div class="padding"></div>
15099
15100     <div class="entry">
15101       <div class="title">
15102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
15103       </div>
15104       <div class="date">
15105         16th January 2011
15106       </div>
15107       <div class="body">
15108         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
15109 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
15110 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
15111 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
15112 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
15113 the Wikipedia article on
15114 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
15115 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
15116 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
15117 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
15118 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
15119 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
15120 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
15121 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
15122 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
15123 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
15124 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
15125 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
15126
15127 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
15128 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
15129 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
15130 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
15131 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
15132 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
15133 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
15134 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
15135 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
15136 from last week</a>.</p>
15137
15138 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
15139 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
15140 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
15141 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
15142 was without royalties and license terms, check out
15143 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15144 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
15145
15146 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
15147 available from
15148 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
15149 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
15150 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
15151
15152 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
15153 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
15154 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
15155 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
15156
15157       </div>
15158       <div class="tags">
15159
15160
15161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15162
15163
15164       </div>
15165     </div>
15166     <div class="padding"></div>
15167
15168     <div class="entry">
15169       <div class="title">
15170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
15171       </div>
15172       <div class="date">
15173         12th January 2011
15174       </div>
15175       <div class="body">
15176         <p>Today I discovered
15177 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
15178 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
15179 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
15180 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
15181 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
15182 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
15183 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
15184 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
15185 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
15186 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
15187 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
15188 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
15189 on the Google announcement is available from
15190 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
15191 A good read. :)</p>
15192
15193 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
15194 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
15195 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
15196 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
15197 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
15198 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
15199 browsers support H.264, and others support
15200 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
15201 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
15202 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
15203 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
15204 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
15205 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
15206 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
15207 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
15208
15209 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
15210 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
15211 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
15212 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
15213 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
15214 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
15215 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
15216
15217 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
15218 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
15219 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
15220 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
15221 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
15222 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
15223 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
15224
15225 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
15226 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
15227 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
15228 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
15229 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
15230 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
15231 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
15232
15233 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
15234 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
15235 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
15236 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
15237 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
15238 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
15239 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
15240 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
15241 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
15242 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
15243 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
15244 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
15245 I guess time will tell.</p>
15246
15247 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
15248 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
15249 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
15250
15251       </div>
15252       <div class="tags">
15253
15254
15255         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15256
15257
15258       </div>
15259     </div>
15260     <div class="padding"></div>
15261
15262     <div class="entry">
15263       <div class="title">
15264         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
15265       </div>
15266       <div class="date">
15267         30th December 2010
15268       </div>
15269       <div class="body">
15270         <p>After trying to
15271 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
15272 Ogg Theora</a> to
15273 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
15274 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
15275 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
15276 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
15277 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
15278 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
15279 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
15280
15281 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
15282 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
15283 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
15284 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
15285 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
15286 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
15287 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
15288
15289 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
15290 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
15291
15292       </div>
15293       <div class="tags">
15294
15295
15296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15297
15298
15299       </div>
15300     </div>
15301     <div class="padding"></div>
15302
15303     <div class="entry">
15304       <div class="title">
15305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
15306       </div>
15307       <div class="date">
15308         27th December 2010
15309       </div>
15310       <div class="body">
15311         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
15312 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
15313 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
15314 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
15315 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
15316 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
15317 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
15318 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
15319
15320 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
15321 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
15322 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
15323 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
15324 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
15325 page</a>.</p>
15326
15327 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
15328 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
15329 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
15330 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
15331 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
15332 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
15333 specification on equal terms.</p>
15334
15335 <blockquote>
15336
15337 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
15338 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
15339 open standard:</p>
15340
15341 <ul>
15342
15343 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15344 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15345 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
15346 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
15347
15348 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15349 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
15350 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
15351 nominal fee.</li>
15352
15353 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
15354 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
15355 free basis.</li>
15356
15357 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15358
15359 </ul>
15360 </blockquote>
15361
15362 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
15363 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
15364 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
15365 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
15366 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
15367 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
15368 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
15369
15370 <blockquote>
15371
15372 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
15373
15374 <ol>
15375
15376 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
15377 tilgængelig.</li>
15378
15379 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
15380 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
15381
15382 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
15383 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
15384
15385 </ol>
15386
15387 </blockquote>
15388
15389 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
15390 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
15391
15392 <blockquote>
15393
15394 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
15395
15396 <ol>
15397
15398 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
15399 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
15400
15401 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
15402 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
15403 Standard themselves;</li>
15404
15405 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
15406 any party or in any business model;</li>
15407
15408 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
15409 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
15410 parties;</li>
15411
15412 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
15413 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
15414 parties.</li>
15415
15416 </ol>
15417
15418 </blockquote>
15419
15420 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
15421 its
15422 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
15423 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
15424
15425 <blockquote>
15426 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
15427
15428 <ul>
15429
15430 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
15431   democratic:
15432
15433          <ul>
15434
15435          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
15436             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
15437             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
15438             and managed.</li>
15439
15440          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
15441             method, can be changed through input from all
15442             participants.</li>
15443
15444          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
15445             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
15446
15447          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
15448             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
15449
15450          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
15451             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
15452             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
15453
15454          </ul>
15455
15456 </li>
15457
15458 </ul>
15459
15460 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
15461 <ul>
15462
15463 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
15464   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
15465   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
15466   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
15467   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
15468
15469 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
15470   a technical or economic barriers</li>
15471
15472 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
15473   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
15474   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
15475   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
15476   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
15477   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
15478   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
15479   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
15480   intended to function.</li>
15481
15482 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
15483   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
15484   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
15485
15486 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
15487   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
15488   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
15489   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
15490   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
15491   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
15492   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
15493   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
15494
15495       <ul>
15496
15497       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
15498         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
15499         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
15500
15501       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
15502         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
15503         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
15504         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
15505
15506       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
15507         licensor</li>
15508
15509       </ul>
15510 </li>
15511
15512 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
15513   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
15514   or restricted licensing terms</li>
15515
15516 </ul>
15517
15518 </blockquote>
15519
15520 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
15521 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
15522 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
15523 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
15524 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
15525 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
15526 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
15527 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
15528 Standards.</p>
15529
15530       </div>
15531       <div class="tags">
15532
15533
15534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15535
15536
15537       </div>
15538     </div>
15539     <div class="padding"></div>
15540
15541     <div class="entry">
15542       <div class="title">
15543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
15544       </div>
15545       <div class="date">
15546         25th December 2010
15547       </div>
15548       <div class="body">
15549         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
15550 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
15551
15552 <blockquote>
15553
15554 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
15555 as follows:</p>
15556
15557 <ol>
15558
15559 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
15560 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
15561 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
15562
15563 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15564 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15565 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
15566 parties.</li>
15567
15568 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15569 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
15570 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
15571
15572 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
15573 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
15574
15575 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
15576
15577 </ol>
15578
15579 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
15580 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
15581 products based on the standard.</p>
15582 </blockquote>
15583
15584 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
15585 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
15586 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
15587 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
15588 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
15589 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
15590 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
15591 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
15592
15593 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
15594
15595 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
15596 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
15597 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
15598 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
15599 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
15600 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
15601 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
15602 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
15603 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
15604 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
15605 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
15606 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
15607 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
15608 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
15609
15610 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
15611
15612 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
15613 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
15614 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
15615 documentation indicating this.</p>
15616
15617 <p>According to
15618 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
15619 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
15620 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
15621 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
15622 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
15623 report is correct.</p>
15624
15625 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
15626
15627 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
15628 container format</a> and both the
15629 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
15630 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
15631 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
15632
15633 <blockquote>
15634
15635 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
15636 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
15637 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
15638 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
15639 specification compliance.
15640
15641 </blockquote>
15642
15643 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
15644 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
15645 this is the term:<p>
15646
15647 <blockquote>
15648
15649 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
15650 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
15651 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
15652 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
15653 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
15654 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
15655 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
15656 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
15657 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
15658 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
15659 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
15660 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
15661
15662 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
15663 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
15664 </blockquote>
15665
15666 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
15667 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
15668 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
15669 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
15670 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
15671
15672 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
15673
15674 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
15675 Theora format.
15676 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
15677 and
15678 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
15679 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
15680 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
15681 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
15682 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
15683 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
15684 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
15685 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
15686
15687 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
15688
15689 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
15690
15691 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
15692
15693 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
15694 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
15695 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
15696 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
15697 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
15698 this.</p>
15699
15700 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
15701 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
15702
15703       </div>
15704       <div class="tags">
15705
15706
15707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15708
15709
15710       </div>
15711     </div>
15712     <div class="padding"></div>
15713
15714     <div class="entry">
15715       <div class="title">
15716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
15717       </div>
15718       <div class="date">
15719         25th December 2010
15720       </div>
15721       <div class="body">
15722         <p>A few days ago
15723 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
15724 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
15725 2.0 of
15726 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
15727 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
15728 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
15729 Nothing very surprising there, given
15730 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
15731 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
15732 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
15733 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
15734 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
15735 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
15736 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
15737 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
15738 standard definition from its content.</p>
15739
15740 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
15741 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
15742 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
15743 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
15744 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
15745 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
15746 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
15747 background information about that story is available in
15748 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
15749 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
15750
15751 <blockquote>
15752 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
15753 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
15754 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
15755
15756 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
15757
15758 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
15759
15760 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
15761
15762 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
15763
15764 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
15765
15766 <p>
15767 <ul>
15768 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
15769 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
15770 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
15771 </ul>
15772 </p>
15773
15774 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
15775
15776 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
15777
15778 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
15779
15780 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
15781
15782 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
15783
15784
15785 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
15786 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
15787 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
15788 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
15789 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
15790 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
15791
15792 </p>
15793
15794 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
15795
15796 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
15797
15798 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
15799
15800 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
15801
15802 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
15803
15804 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
15805
15806 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
15807
15808 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
15809
15810 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
15811
15812 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
15813
15814 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
15815
15816 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
15817
15818 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
15819
15820 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
15821
15822 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
15823
15824 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
15825
15826 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
15827
15828 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
15829
15830 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
15831
15832 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
15833
15834 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
15835
15836 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
15837
15838 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
15839
15840 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
15841
15842 <p>On security:</p>
15843
15844 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
15845
15846 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
15847
15848 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
15849
15850 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
15851
15852 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
15853
15854 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
15855
15856 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
15857
15858 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
15859
15860 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
15861
15862 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
15863
15864 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
15865
15866 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
15867
15868 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
15869
15870 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
15871
15872 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
15873
15874 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
15875
15876 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
15877
15878 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
15879
15880 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
15881
15882 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
15883
15884 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
15885
15886 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
15887
15888 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
15889
15890 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
15891
15892 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
15893
15894 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
15895
15896 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
15897
15898 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
15899
15900 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
15901
15902 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
15903
15904 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
15905
15906 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
15907
15908 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
15909
15910 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
15911
15912 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
15913
15914 <p>Cordially,<br>
15915 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
15916 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
15917 </blockquote>
15918
15919       </div>
15920       <div class="tags">
15921
15922
15923         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15924
15925
15926       </div>
15927     </div>
15928     <div class="padding"></div>
15929
15930     <div class="entry">
15931       <div class="title">
15932         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
15933       </div>
15934       <div class="date">
15935         25th December 2010
15936       </div>
15937       <div class="body">
15938         <p>Half a year ago I
15939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
15940 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
15941 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
15942 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
15943
15944 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
15945 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
15946 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
15947 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
15948 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
15949 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
15950 got such a great test tool available.</p>
15951
15952       </div>
15953       <div class="tags">
15954
15955
15956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15957
15958
15959       </div>
15960     </div>
15961     <div class="padding"></div>
15962
15963     <div class="entry">
15964       <div class="title">
15965         <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>
15966       </div>
15967       <div class="date">
15968         22nd December 2010
15969       </div>
15970       <div class="body">
15971         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
15972 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
15973 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
15974 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
15975 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
15976 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
15977 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
15978 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
15979 university.</p>
15980
15981 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
15982 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
15983 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
15984 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
15985 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
15986 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
15987 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
15988 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
15989
15990 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
15991 I perform on a new model.</p>
15992
15993 <ul>
15994
15995 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
15996 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
15997 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
15998
15999 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
16000 installation, X.org is working.</li>
16001
16002 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
16003 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
16004 reported by the program.</li>
16005
16006 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
16007 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
16008 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
16009 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
16010 normally test this by playing
16011 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
16012 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
16013
16014 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
16015 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16016
16017 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
16018 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
16019
16020 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
16021 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
16022
16023 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
16024 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
16025 few.</li>
16026
16027 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
16028 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
16029 notice this.</li>
16030
16031 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
16032 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
16033 resume.</li>
16034
16035 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
16036 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
16037 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
16038 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
16039 not.</li>
16040
16041 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
16042 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
16043 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
16044 existence.</li>
16045
16046 </ul>
16047
16048 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
16049 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
16050 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
16051 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
16052 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
16053 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
16054 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
16055 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
16056
16057       </div>
16058       <div class="tags">
16059
16060
16061         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>.
16062
16063
16064       </div>
16065     </div>
16066     <div class="padding"></div>
16067
16068     <div class="entry">
16069       <div class="title">
16070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
16071       </div>
16072       <div class="date">
16073         11th December 2010
16074       </div>
16075       <div class="body">
16076         <p>As I continue to explore
16077 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
16078 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
16079 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
16080
16081 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
16082 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
16083 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
16084 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
16085 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
16086 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
16087 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
16088 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
16089 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
16090 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
16091 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
16092 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
16093 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
16094 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
16095 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
16096 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
16097 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
16098 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
16099 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
16100 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
16101
16102 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
16103 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
16104 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
16105 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
16106 If the Skolelinux foundation
16107 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
16108 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
16109 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
16110 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
16111 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
16112 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
16113 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
16114 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
16115
16116 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
16117 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
16118 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
16119 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
16120 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
16121 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
16122 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
16123 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
16124 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
16125 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
16126 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
16127 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
16128 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
16129 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
16130 currencies.</p>
16131
16132 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
16133 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
16134 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
16135 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
16136 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
16137 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
16138 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
16139 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
16140 BitCoins.  Check out
16141 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
16142 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
16143 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
16144 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
16145 yet.</p>
16146
16147 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
16148 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
16149 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
16150 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
16151 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
16152
16153       </div>
16154       <div class="tags">
16155
16156
16157         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>.
16158
16159
16160       </div>
16161     </div>
16162     <div class="padding"></div>
16163
16164     <div class="entry">
16165       <div class="title">
16166         <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>
16167       </div>
16168       <div class="date">
16169         10th December 2010
16170       </div>
16171       <div class="body">
16172         <p>With this weeks lawless
16173 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
16174 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
16175 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
16176 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
16177 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
16178 A blog post from
16179 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
16180 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
16181 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
16182 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
16183 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
16184 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
16185 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
16186
16187 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
16188 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
16189 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
16190 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
16191 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
16192 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
16193 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
16194 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
16195 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
16196 Debian</a> soon.</p>
16197
16198 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
16199 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
16200 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
16201 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
16202 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
16203 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
16204 you can even get
16205 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
16206 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
16207 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
16208 on the current exchange rates.</p>
16209
16210 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
16211 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
16212 donations to the address
16213 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
16214
16215       </div>
16216       <div class="tags">
16217
16218
16219         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>.
16220
16221
16222       </div>
16223     </div>
16224     <div class="padding"></div>
16225
16226     <div class="entry">
16227       <div class="title">
16228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
16229       </div>
16230       <div class="date">
16231          9th December 2010
16232       </div>
16233       <div class="body">
16234         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
16235 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
16236 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
16237 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
16238 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
16239 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
16240 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
16241 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
16242 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
16243 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
16244 operational.</p>
16245
16246 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
16247 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
16248 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
16249 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
16250 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
16251 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
16252 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
16253
16254       </div>
16255       <div class="tags">
16256
16257
16258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
16259
16260
16261       </div>
16262     </div>
16263     <div class="padding"></div>
16264
16265     <div class="entry">
16266       <div class="title">
16267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
16268       </div>
16269       <div class="date">
16270         29th November 2010
16271       </div>
16272       <div class="body">
16273         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16274 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
16275 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
16276 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
16277 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
16278 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
16279
16280 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
16281 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
16282 will hold its
16283 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
16284 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
16285 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
16286 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
16287 vote this year.</p>
16288
16289       </div>
16290       <div class="tags">
16291
16292
16293         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16294
16295
16296       </div>
16297     </div>
16298     <div class="padding"></div>
16299
16300     <div class="entry">
16301       <div class="title">
16302         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
16303       </div>
16304       <div class="date">
16305         27th November 2010
16306       </div>
16307       <div class="body">
16308         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
16309 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
16310 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
16311 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
16312 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
16313 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
16314 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
16315 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
16316
16317 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
16318 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
16319 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
16320 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
16321 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
16322 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
16323 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
16324 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
16325 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
16326 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
16327 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
16328
16329 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
16330 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
16331 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
16332 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
16333 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
16334 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
16335 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
16336 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
16337 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
16338 what is going on.</p>
16339
16340       </div>
16341       <div class="tags">
16342
16343
16344         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>.
16345
16346
16347       </div>
16348     </div>
16349     <div class="padding"></div>
16350
16351     <div class="entry">
16352       <div class="title">
16353         <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>
16354       </div>
16355       <div class="date">
16356         22nd November 2010
16357       </div>
16358       <div class="body">
16359         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
16360 upgrade testing of the
16361 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16362 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
16363 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
16364 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
16365
16366 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16367
16368 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16369
16370 <blockquote><p>
16371   apache2.2-bin
16372   aptdaemon
16373   baobab
16374   binfmt-support
16375   browser-plugin-gnash
16376   cheese-common
16377   cli-common
16378   cups-pk-helper
16379   dmz-cursor-theme
16380   empathy
16381   empathy-common
16382   freedesktop-sound-theme
16383   freeglut3
16384   gconf-defaults-service
16385   gdm-themes
16386   gedit-plugins
16387   geoclue
16388   geoclue-hostip
16389   geoclue-localnet
16390   geoclue-manual
16391   geoclue-yahoo
16392   gnash
16393   gnash-common
16394   gnome
16395   gnome-backgrounds
16396   gnome-cards-data
16397   gnome-codec-install
16398   gnome-core
16399   gnome-desktop-environment
16400   gnome-disk-utility
16401   gnome-screenshot
16402   gnome-search-tool
16403   gnome-session-canberra
16404   gnome-system-log
16405   gnome-themes-extras
16406   gnome-themes-more
16407   gnome-user-share
16408   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16409   gstreamer0.10-tools
16410   gtk2-engines
16411   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16412   gtk2-engines-smooth
16413   hamster-applet
16414   libapache2-mod-dnssd
16415   libapr1
16416   libaprutil1
16417   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
16418   libaprutil1-ldap
16419   libart2.0-cil
16420   libboost-date-time1.42.0
16421   libboost-python1.42.0
16422   libboost-thread1.42.0
16423   libchamplain-0.4-0
16424   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
16425   libcheese-gtk18
16426   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16427   libcryptui0
16428   libdiscid0
16429   libelf1
16430   libepc-1.0-2
16431   libepc-common
16432   libepc-ui-1.0-2
16433   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16434   libfreerdp0
16435   libgconf2.0-cil
16436   libgdata-common
16437   libgdata7
16438   libgdu-gtk0
16439   libgee2
16440   libgeoclue0
16441   libgexiv2-0
16442   libgif4
16443   libglade2.0-cil
16444   libglib2.0-cil
16445   libgmime2.4-cil
16446   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16447   libgnome2.24-cil
16448   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
16449   libgpod-common
16450   libgpod4
16451   libgtk2.0-cil
16452   libgtkglext1
16453   libgtksourceview2.0-common
16454   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16455   libmono-addins0.2-cil
16456   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
16457   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16458   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
16459   libmono-posix2.0-cil
16460   libmono-security2.0-cil
16461   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16462   libmono-system2.0-cil
16463   libmtp8
16464   libmusicbrainz3-6
16465   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
16466   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
16467   libopal3.6.8
16468   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
16469   libpt2.6.7
16470   libpython2.6
16471   librpm1
16472   librpmio1
16473   libsdl1.2debian
16474   libsrtp0
16475   libssh-4
16476   libtelepathy-farsight0
16477   libtelepathy-glib0
16478   libtidy-0.99-0
16479   media-player-info
16480   mesa-utils
16481   mono-2.0-gac
16482   mono-gac
16483   mono-runtime
16484   nautilus-sendto
16485   nautilus-sendto-empathy
16486   p7zip-full
16487   pkg-config
16488   python-aptdaemon
16489   python-aptdaemon-gtk
16490   python-axiom
16491   python-beautifulsoup
16492   python-bugbuddy
16493   python-clientform
16494   python-coherence
16495   python-configobj
16496   python-crypto
16497   python-cupshelpers
16498   python-elementtree
16499   python-epsilon
16500   python-evolution
16501   python-feedparser
16502   python-gdata
16503   python-gdbm
16504   python-gst0.10
16505   python-gtkglext1
16506   python-gtksourceview2
16507   python-httplib2
16508   python-louie
16509   python-mako
16510   python-markupsafe
16511   python-mechanize
16512   python-nevow
16513   python-notify
16514   python-opengl
16515   python-openssl
16516   python-pam
16517   python-pkg-resources
16518   python-pyasn1
16519   python-pysqlite2
16520   python-rdflib
16521   python-serial
16522   python-tagpy
16523   python-twisted-bin
16524   python-twisted-conch
16525   python-twisted-core
16526   python-twisted-web
16527   python-utidylib
16528   python-webkit
16529   python-xdg
16530   python-zope.interface
16531   remmina
16532   remmina-plugin-data
16533   remmina-plugin-rdp
16534   remmina-plugin-vnc
16535   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16536   rhythmbox-plugins
16537   rpm-common
16538   rpm2cpio
16539   seahorse-plugins
16540   shotwell
16541   software-center
16542   system-config-printer-udev
16543   telepathy-gabble
16544   telepathy-mission-control-5
16545   telepathy-salut
16546   tomboy
16547   totem
16548   totem-coherence
16549   totem-mozilla
16550   totem-plugins
16551   transmission-common
16552   xdg-user-dirs
16553   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
16554   xserver-xephyr
16555 </p></blockquote>
16556
16557 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16558
16559 <blockquote><p>
16560   cheese
16561   ekiga
16562   eog
16563   epiphany-extensions
16564   evolution-exchange
16565   fast-user-switch-applet
16566   file-roller
16567   gcalctool
16568   gconf-editor
16569   gdm
16570   gedit
16571   gedit-common
16572   gnome-games
16573   gnome-games-data
16574   gnome-nettool
16575   gnome-system-tools
16576   gnome-themes
16577   gnuchess
16578   gucharmap
16579   guile-1.8-libs
16580   libavahi-ui0
16581   libdmx1
16582   libgalago3
16583   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
16584   libgtksourceview2.0-0
16585   liblircclient0
16586   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
16587   libspeexdsp1
16588   libsvga1
16589   rhythmbox
16590   seahorse
16591   sound-juicer
16592   system-config-printer
16593   totem-common
16594   transmission-gtk
16595   vinagre
16596   vino
16597 </p></blockquote>
16598
16599 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16600
16601 <blockquote><p>
16602   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16603 </p></blockquote>
16604
16605 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16606
16607 <blockquote><p>
16608 [nothing]
16609 </p></blockquote>
16610
16611 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
16612
16613 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16614
16615 <blockquote><p>
16616   ksmserver
16617 </p></blockquote>
16618
16619 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
16620
16621 <blockquote><p>
16622   kwin
16623   network-manager-kde
16624 </p></blockquote>
16625
16626 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
16627
16628 <blockquote><p>
16629   arts
16630   dolphin
16631   freespacenotifier
16632   google-gadgets-gst
16633   google-gadgets-xul
16634   kappfinder
16635   kcalc
16636   kcharselect
16637   kde-core
16638   kde-plasma-desktop
16639   kde-standard
16640   kde-window-manager
16641   kdeartwork
16642   kdeartwork-emoticons
16643   kdeartwork-style
16644   kdeartwork-theme-icon
16645   kdebase
16646   kdebase-apps
16647   kdebase-workspace
16648   kdebase-workspace-bin
16649   kdebase-workspace-data
16650   kdeeject
16651   kdelibs
16652   kdeplasma-addons
16653   kdeutils
16654   kdewallpapers
16655   kdf
16656   kfloppy
16657   kgpg
16658   khelpcenter4
16659   kinfocenter
16660   konq-plugins-l10n
16661   konqueror-nsplugins
16662   kscreensaver
16663   kscreensaver-xsavers
16664   ktimer
16665   kwrite
16666   libgle3
16667   libkde4-ruby1.8
16668   libkonq5
16669   libkonq5-templates
16670   libnetpbm10
16671   libplasma-ruby
16672   libplasma-ruby1.8
16673   libqt4-ruby1.8
16674   marble-data
16675   marble-plugins
16676   netpbm
16677   nuvola-icon-theme
16678   plasma-dataengines-workspace
16679   plasma-desktop
16680   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
16681   plasma-runners-addons
16682   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
16683   plasma-scriptengine-python
16684   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
16685   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
16686   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
16687   plasma-scriptengines
16688   plasma-wallpapers-addons
16689   plasma-widget-folderview
16690   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16691   ruby
16692   sweeper
16693   update-notifier-kde
16694   xscreensaver-data-extra
16695   xscreensaver-gl
16696   xscreensaver-gl-extra
16697   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16698 </p></blockquote>
16699
16700 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
16701
16702 <blockquote><p>
16703   ark
16704   google-gadgets-common
16705   google-gadgets-qt
16706   htdig
16707   kate
16708   kdebase-bin
16709   kdebase-data
16710   kdepasswd
16711   kfind
16712   klipper
16713   konq-plugins
16714   konqueror
16715   ksysguard
16716   ksysguardd
16717   libarchive1
16718   libcln6
16719   libeet1
16720   libeina-svn-06
16721   libggadget-1.0-0b
16722   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
16723   libgps19
16724   libkdecorations4
16725   libkephal4
16726   libkonq4
16727   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
16728   libkscreensaver5
16729   libksgrd4
16730   libksignalplotter4
16731   libkunitconversion4
16732   libkwineffects1a
16733   libmarblewidget4
16734   libntrack-qt4-1
16735   libntrack0
16736   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
16737   libplasmaclock4a
16738   libplasmagenericshell4
16739   libprocesscore4a
16740   libprocessui4a
16741   libqalculate5
16742   libqedje0a
16743   libqtruby4shared2
16744   libqzion0a
16745   libruby1.8
16746   libscim8c2a
16747   libsmokekdecore4-3
16748   libsmokekdeui4-3
16749   libsmokekfile3
16750   libsmokekhtml3
16751   libsmokekio3
16752   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
16753   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
16754   libsmokekparts3
16755   libsmokektexteditor3
16756   libsmokekutils3
16757   libsmokenepomuk3
16758   libsmokephonon3
16759   libsmokeplasma3
16760   libsmokeqtcore4-3
16761   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
16762   libsmokeqtgui4-3
16763   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
16764   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
16765   libsmokeqtscript4-3
16766   libsmokeqtsql4-3
16767   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
16768   libsmokeqttest4-3
16769   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
16770   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
16771   libsmokeqtxml4-3
16772   libsmokesolid3
16773   libsmokesoprano3
16774   libtaskmanager4a
16775   libtidy-0.99-0
16776   libweather-ion4a
16777   libxklavier16
16778   libxxf86misc1
16779   okteta
16780   oxygencursors
16781   plasma-dataengines-addons
16782   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
16783   plasma-widget-lancelot
16784   plasma-widgets-addons
16785   plasma-widgets-workspace
16786   polkit-kde-1
16787   ruby1.8
16788   systemsettings
16789   update-notifier-common
16790 </p></blockquote>
16791
16792 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
16793 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
16794 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
16795 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
16796
16797       </div>
16798       <div class="tags">
16799
16800
16801         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>.
16802
16803
16804       </div>
16805     </div>
16806     <div class="padding"></div>
16807
16808     <div class="entry">
16809       <div class="title">
16810         <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>
16811       </div>
16812       <div class="date">
16813         22nd November 2010
16814       </div>
16815       <div class="body">
16816         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
16817 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
16818 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
16819 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
16820 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
16821 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
16822 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
16823 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
16824 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
16825
16826 <p>I found
16827 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
16828 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
16829 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
16830 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
16831 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
16832 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
16833
16834 <pre>
16835 #!/bin/sh
16836
16837 # Based on
16838 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
16839
16840 set -e
16841 set -x
16842
16843 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
16844     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
16845     exit 1
16846 else
16847     host="$1"
16848 fi
16849
16850 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
16851     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
16852     exit 1
16853 fi
16854
16855 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
16856 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16857 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
16858 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
16859
16860 img=$host.img
16861 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
16862 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
16863
16864 parted $img mklabel msdos
16865 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
16866 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
16867 parted $img set 1 boot on
16868
16869 modprobe dm-mod
16870 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
16871 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
16872
16873 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
16874 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
16875 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
16876
16877 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
16878 losetup -d /dev/loop0
16879 </pre>
16880
16881 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
16882 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
16883
16884 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
16885 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
16886 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
16887 seem to work just fine.</p>
16888
16889       </div>
16890       <div class="tags">
16891
16892
16893         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>.
16894
16895
16896       </div>
16897     </div>
16898     <div class="padding"></div>
16899
16900     <div class="entry">
16901       <div class="title">
16902         <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>
16903       </div>
16904       <div class="date">
16905         20th November 2010
16906       </div>
16907       <div class="body">
16908         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
16909 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16910 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
16911 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
16912
16913 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
16914 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
16915 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
16916
16917 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
16918
16919 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
16920
16921 <blockquote><p>
16922   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
16923   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
16924   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
16925   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
16926   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
16927   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
16928   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
16929   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
16930   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
16931   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
16932   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16933   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16934   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
16935   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
16936   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
16937   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
16938   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
16939   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
16940   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16941   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
16942   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
16943   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16944   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
16945   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
16946   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
16947   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16948   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16949   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
16950   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16951   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
16952   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
16953   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16954   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
16955   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
16956   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
16957   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
16958   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
16959   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
16960   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
16961   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
16962   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
16963   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
16964   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
16965   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
16966   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
16967   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
16968   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
16969   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
16970   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
16971   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
16972   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
16973   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
16974   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16975   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
16976   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
16977   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
16978   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
16979   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
16980   zip
16981 </p></blockquote>
16982
16983 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
16984
16985 <blockquote><p>
16986   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
16987   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
16988   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
16989   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
16990   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
16991   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
16992   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
16993   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
16994   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
16995   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
16996   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
16997   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16998   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
16999   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
17000   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
17001   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
17002   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17003   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
17004   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
17005   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
17006   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
17007   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
17008   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
17009   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
17010   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
17011   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
17012   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
17013   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
17014   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
17015 </p></blockquote>
17016
17017 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17018
17019 <blockquote><p>
17020   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
17021 </p></blockquote>
17022
17023 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17024
17025 <blockquote><p>
17026 [nothing]
17027 </p></blockquote>
17028
17029 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
17030
17031 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
17032
17033 <blockquote><p>
17034   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
17035   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
17036   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
17037   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
17038   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
17039   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
17040   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
17041   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
17042   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
17043   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
17044   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
17045   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
17046   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
17047   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
17048   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
17049   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
17050   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
17051   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
17052   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
17053   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
17054   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
17055   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
17056   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
17057   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
17058   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
17059   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
17060   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
17061   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
17062   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
17063   ttf-sazanami-gothic
17064 </p></blockquote>
17065
17066 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
17067
17068 <blockquote><p>
17069   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
17070   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
17071   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
17072   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
17073   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
17074   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
17075   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
17076   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
17077   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
17078   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
17079   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
17080   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
17081   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
17082   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
17083   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
17084   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
17085   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
17086   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
17087   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
17088   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
17089   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
17090   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
17091   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
17092   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
17093   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
17094   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
17095   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
17096   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
17097   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
17098   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
17099   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
17100   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
17101   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
17102 </p></blockquote>
17103
17104 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
17105
17106 <blockquote><p>
17107   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
17108   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
17109   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
17110   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
17111   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
17112   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
17113   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
17114 </p></blockquote>
17115
17116 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
17117
17118 <blockquote><p>
17119   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
17120 </p></blockquote>
17121
17122       </div>
17123       <div class="tags">
17124
17125
17126         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>.
17127
17128
17129       </div>
17130     </div>
17131     <div class="padding"></div>
17132
17133     <div class="entry">
17134       <div class="title">
17135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
17136       </div>
17137       <div class="date">
17138         20th November 2010
17139       </div>
17140       <div class="body">
17141         <p>Answering
17142 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
17143 call from the Gnash project</a> for
17144 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
17145 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
17146 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
17147 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
17148 releases out more often.</p>
17149
17150 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
17151 I have considered setting up a <a
17152 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
17153 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
17154 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
17155 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
17156 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
17157 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
17158 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
17159 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
17160 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
17161 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
17162 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
17163 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
17164
17165       </div>
17166       <div class="tags">
17167
17168
17169         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>.
17170
17171
17172       </div>
17173     </div>
17174     <div class="padding"></div>
17175
17176     <div class="entry">
17177       <div class="title">
17178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
17179       </div>
17180       <div class="date">
17181          9th November 2010
17182       </div>
17183       <div class="body">
17184         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
17185
17186 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
17187 3D linked in from
17188 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
17189 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
17190
17191       </div>
17192       <div class="tags">
17193
17194
17195         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>.
17196
17197
17198       </div>
17199     </div>
17200     <div class="padding"></div>
17201
17202     <div class="entry">
17203       <div class="title">
17204         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
17205       </div>
17206       <div class="date">
17207          7th November 2010
17208       </div>
17209       <div class="body">
17210         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
17211 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
17212 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
17213 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
17214 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
17215 working using this DVD.</p>
17216
17217 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
17218 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
17219 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
17220 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
17221 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
17222 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
17223 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
17224
17225 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
17226 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
17227 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
17228 Debian archive.</p>
17229
17230 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
17231 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
17232 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
17233 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
17234 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
17235 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
17236 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
17237 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
17238 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
17239 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
17240 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
17241 free X driver should work.</p>
17242
17243 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
17244 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
17245 DVD more useful again.</p>
17246
17247       </div>
17248       <div class="tags">
17249
17250
17251         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17252
17253
17254       </div>
17255     </div>
17256     <div class="padding"></div>
17257
17258     <div class="entry">
17259       <div class="title">
17260         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
17261       </div>
17262       <div class="date">
17263         24th October 2010
17264       </div>
17265       <div class="body">
17266         <p>Some updates.</p>
17267
17268 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
17269 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
17270 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
17271 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
17272 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
17273 :)</p>
17274
17275 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
17276 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
17277 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
17278 It is called
17279 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
17280 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
17281 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
17282 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
17283 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
17284 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
17285
17286 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
17287 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
17288 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
17289 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
17290 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
17291 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
17292 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
17293 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
17294 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
17295 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
17296
17297       </div>
17298       <div class="tags">
17299
17300
17301         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>.
17302
17303
17304       </div>
17305     </div>
17306     <div class="padding"></div>
17307
17308     <div class="entry">
17309       <div class="title">
17310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
17311       </div>
17312       <div class="date">
17313         19th October 2010
17314       </div>
17315       <div class="body">
17316         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
17317 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
17318 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
17319 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
17320 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
17321 AVM2 flash files.</p>
17322
17323 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
17324 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
17325 following text:</P>
17326
17327 <p><blockquote>
17328
17329   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
17330   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
17331
17332   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
17333
17334   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
17335
17336   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
17337   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
17338   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
17339   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
17340   days. The project web page is available from
17341   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
17342   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
17343   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
17344
17345   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
17346   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
17347   to get this to happen.</p>
17348
17349   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
17350   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
17351
17352 </blockquote></p>
17353
17354 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
17355 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
17356 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
17357 :)</p>
17358
17359       </div>
17360       <div class="tags">
17361
17362
17363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17364
17365
17366       </div>
17367     </div>
17368     <div class="padding"></div>
17369
17370     <div class="entry">
17371       <div class="title">
17372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
17373       </div>
17374       <div class="date">
17375          9th October 2010
17376       </div>
17377       <div class="body">
17378         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
17379 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
17380 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
17381 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
17382 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
17383 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
17384 robots.</p>
17385
17386 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
17387 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
17388 a few less important features too.</p>
17389
17390 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
17391 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
17392 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
17393 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
17394
17395 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
17396 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
17397 source or binary package:</p>
17398
17399 <p><ul>
17400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
17401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
17402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
17403 </ul></p>
17404
17405 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
17406 please let me know.</p>
17407
17408       </div>
17409       <div class="tags">
17410
17411
17412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
17413
17414
17415       </div>
17416     </div>
17417     <div class="padding"></div>
17418
17419     <div class="entry">
17420       <div class="title">
17421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
17422       </div>
17423       <div class="date">
17424          3rd October 2010
17425       </div>
17426       <div class="body">
17427         <p><ul>
17428
17429 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
17430 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
17431
17432 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
17433 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
17434 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
17435
17436 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
17437 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
17438 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
17439 simple setup.
17440
17441 </ul></p>
17442
17443       </div>
17444       <div class="tags">
17445
17446
17447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17448
17449
17450       </div>
17451     </div>
17452     <div class="padding"></div>
17453
17454     <div class="entry">
17455       <div class="title">
17456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
17457       </div>
17458       <div class="date">
17459          9th September 2010
17460       </div>
17461       <div class="body">
17462         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
17463 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
17464 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
17465 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
17466 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
17467 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
17468 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
17469 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
17470 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
17471
17472 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
17473 written:</p>
17474
17475 <blockquote>
17476 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
17477 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
17478 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
17479 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
17480 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
17481
17482 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
17483 standard.</p>
17484 </blockquote>
17485
17486 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
17487 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
17488 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
17489 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
17490
17491 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
17492 read
17493 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
17494 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
17495 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
17496 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
17497 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
17498 the issue.  The solution is to support the
17499 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
17500 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
17501 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
17502
17503       </div>
17504       <div class="tags">
17505
17506
17507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17508
17509
17510       </div>
17511     </div>
17512     <div class="padding"></div>
17513
17514     <div class="entry">
17515       <div class="title">
17516         <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>
17517       </div>
17518       <div class="date">
17519          4th September 2010
17520       </div>
17521       <div class="body">
17522         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
17523 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
17524 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
17525 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
17526 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
17527 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
17528 installed.</p>
17529
17530 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
17531 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
17532 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
17533 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
17534 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17535 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
17536 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
17537 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
17538 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
17539
17540 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
17541 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
17542 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
17543 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
17544 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
17545 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
17546 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
17547 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
17548 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
17549 pages they want to visit.</p>
17550
17551 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
17552 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
17553 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
17554 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
17555 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
17556 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
17557 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
17558 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
17559 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
17560 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
17561 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
17562
17563       </div>
17564       <div class="tags">
17565
17566
17567         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>.
17568
17569
17570       </div>
17571     </div>
17572     <div class="padding"></div>
17573
17574     <div class="entry">
17575       <div class="title">
17576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
17577       </div>
17578       <div class="date">
17579          1st September 2010
17580       </div>
17581       <div class="body">
17582         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
17583 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
17584 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
17585 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
17586 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
17587 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
17588 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
17589 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
17590 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
17591 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
17592 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
17593 drive around.</p>
17594
17595 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
17596 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
17597
17598 <p><pre>
17599 use Spykee;
17600 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
17601 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
17602 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
17603 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
17604 $spykee->left();
17605 sleep 2;
17606 $spykee->right();
17607 sleep 2;
17608 $spykee->forward();
17609 sleep 2;
17610 $spykee->back();
17611 sleep 2;
17612 $spykee->stop();
17613 </pre></p>
17614
17615 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
17616 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
17617 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
17618 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
17619 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
17620 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
17621 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
17622 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
17623 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
17624 going. :).</p>
17625
17626 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
17627 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
17628 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
17629 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
17630
17631       </div>
17632       <div class="tags">
17633
17634
17635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
17636
17637
17638       </div>
17639     </div>
17640     <div class="padding"></div>
17641
17642     <div class="entry">
17643       <div class="title">
17644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
17645       </div>
17646       <div class="date">
17647         30th August 2010
17648       </div>
17649       <div class="body">
17650         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
17651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
17652 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
17653 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
17654 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
17655 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
17656 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
17657
17658 <pre>
17659 % ln foo bar
17660 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
17661 %
17662 </pre>
17663
17664 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
17665 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
17666 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
17667 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
17668 nevertheless. :)</p>
17669
17670 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
17671 git from
17672 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
17673
17674       </div>
17675       <div class="tags">
17676
17677
17678         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17679
17680
17681       </div>
17682     </div>
17683     <div class="padding"></div>
17684
17685     <div class="entry">
17686       <div class="title">
17687         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
17688       </div>
17689       <div class="date">
17690         26th August 2010
17691       </div>
17692       <div class="body">
17693         <p>My file system sematics program
17694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
17695 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
17696 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
17697 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
17698 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
17699 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
17700 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
17701 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
17702 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
17703 script:</p>
17704
17705 <pre>
17706 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
17707   mode_t retval = 0;
17708   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
17709   if (-1 != fd) {
17710     unlink(name);
17711     struct stat statbuf;
17712     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
17713       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
17714     }
17715     close(fd);
17716   }
17717   return retval;
17718 }
17719
17720 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
17721 int test_umask(void) {
17722   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
17723
17724   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
17725   mode_t newmode;
17726   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17727     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
17728            newmode);
17729   }
17730   umask(007);
17731   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
17732     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
17733            newmode);
17734   }
17735
17736   umask (orig_umask);
17737   return 0;
17738 }
17739
17740 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17741   [...]
17742   test_umask();
17743   return 0;
17744 }
17745 </pre>
17746
17747 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
17748
17749 <pre>
17750 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17751 info: testing symlink creation
17752 info: testing subdirectory creation
17753 info: testing fcntl locking
17754   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17755   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17756   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17757   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17758   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17759   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17760 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17761 </pre>
17762
17763 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
17764 result:</p>
17765
17766 <pre>
17767 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17768 info: testing symlink creation
17769 info: testing subdirectory creation
17770 info: testing fcntl locking
17771   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17772   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17773   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
17774   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
17775   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
17776   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
17777 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17778   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
17779   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
17780 </pre>
17781
17782 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
17783 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
17784 directory.</p>
17785
17786 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
17787 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
17788
17789 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17790 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17791 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
17792
17793       </div>
17794       <div class="tags">
17795
17796
17797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17798
17799
17800       </div>
17801     </div>
17802     <div class="padding"></div>
17803
17804     <div class="entry">
17805       <div class="title">
17806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
17807       </div>
17808       <div class="date">
17809         15th August 2010
17810       </div>
17811       <div class="body">
17812         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
17813 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
17814 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
17815 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
17816 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
17817 long time.</p>
17818
17819       </div>
17820       <div class="tags">
17821
17822
17823         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17824
17825
17826       </div>
17827     </div>
17828     <div class="padding"></div>
17829
17830     <div class="entry">
17831       <div class="title">
17832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
17833       </div>
17834       <div class="date">
17835          9th August 2010
17836       </div>
17837       <div class="body">
17838         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
17839 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
17840 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
17841 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
17842 generated configuration.</p>
17843
17844 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
17845 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
17846 without any manual configuration.</p>
17847
17848 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
17849 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
17850 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
17851 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
17852 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
17853 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
17854 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
17855 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
17856 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
17857 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
17858 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
17859 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
17860 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
17861 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
17862 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
17863 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
17864 use.</p>
17865
17866 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
17867 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
17868 working properly out of the box:</p>
17869
17870 <ul>
17871 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
17872 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
17873 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
17874 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
17875 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
17876 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
17877 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
17878 </ul>
17879
17880 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
17881
17882 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
17883 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
17884 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
17885 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
17886 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
17887
17888 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
17889 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
17890 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
17891 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
17892 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
17893 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
17894 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
17895 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
17896
17897 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
17898 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
17899 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
17900 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
17901 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
17902 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
17903 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
17904 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
17905 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
17906 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
17907 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
17908 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
17909 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
17910 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
17911 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
17912 current DNS domain is used.</p>
17913
17914 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
17915 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
17916 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
17917 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
17918 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
17919 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
17920 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
17921 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
17922 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
17923 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
17924 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
17925 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
17926 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
17927
17928 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
17929 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
17930 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
17931 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
17932 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
17933 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
17934 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
17935 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
17936 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
17937 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
17938 do for now. :)</p>
17939
17940 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
17941 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
17942 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
17943 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
17944 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
17945 yet.</p>
17946
17947 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17948 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
17949
17950 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
17951 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
17952 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
17953 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
17954
17955       </div>
17956       <div class="tags">
17957
17958
17959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17960
17961
17962       </div>
17963     </div>
17964     <div class="padding"></div>
17965
17966     <div class="entry">
17967       <div class="title">
17968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
17969       </div>
17970       <div class="date">
17971          8th August 2010
17972       </div>
17973       <div class="body">
17974         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
17975 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
17976 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
17977 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
17978 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
17979 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
17980 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
17981
17982 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
17983 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
17984 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
17985 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
17986 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
17987 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
17988 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
17989
17990 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
17991 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
17992 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
17993 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
17994 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
17995
17996 <pre>
17997 /*
17998  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
17999  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
18000  * directory.
18001  * License: GPL v2 or later
18002  *
18003  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
18004  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
18005 */
18006
18007 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
18008 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
18009 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
18010
18011 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
18012
18013 #include &lt;errno.h>
18014 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
18015 #include &lt;stdio.h>
18016 #include &lt;string.h>
18017 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
18018 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
18019 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
18020 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
18021 #include &lt;unistd.h>
18022
18023 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18024 /*
18025  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
18026  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
18027  * below.
18028  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
18029  */
18030 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
18031 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
18032   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
18033 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
18034   char *zErrMsg;
18035   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18036   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
18037   unlink(name);
18038   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
18039   if( rc ){
18040     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
18041     sqlite3_close(db);
18042     return -1;
18043   }
18044
18045   /* create tables */
18046   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
18047   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
18048     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
18049     sqlite3_close(db);
18050     return -1;
18051   }
18052   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
18053   sqlite3_close(db);
18054   return 0;
18055 }
18056 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18057
18058 /*
18059  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
18060  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
18061  * done in the sqlite3 library.
18062  * See also
18063  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
18064  * POSIX specification
18065  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
18066  */
18067 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
18068   struct flock fl;
18069   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
18070   unlink(name);
18071   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
18072   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
18073
18074   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
18075   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
18076   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18077   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18078   fl.l_len    = 1;
18079   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18080   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18081
18082   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18083   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18084   fl.l_len    = 510;
18085   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
18086   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18087
18088   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18089   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18090   fl.l_len    = 1;
18091   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18092   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18093
18094   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
18095   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18096   fl.l_len    = 1;
18097   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
18098   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18099
18100   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
18101   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
18102   fl.l_len    = 510;
18103   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18104
18105   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
18106   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
18107   fl.l_len    = 2;
18108   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
18109   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
18110
18111   close(fd);
18112   return 0;
18113 }
18114
18115 /*
18116  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
18117  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
18118  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
18119  * slowing down file operations.
18120  */
18121 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
18122 #define LEVELS 5
18123   char *path = strdup("test");
18124   char *dirs[LEVELS];
18125   int level;
18126   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
18127   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
18128     char *newpath = NULL;
18129     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
18130       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
18131              path, strerror(errno));
18132       break;
18133     }
18134     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
18135     free(path);
18136     path = newpath;
18137   }
18138   return 0;
18139 }
18140
18141 /*
18142  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
18143  * KDE.
18144  */
18145 int test_symlinks(void) {
18146   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
18147   unlink("symlink");
18148   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
18149     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
18150   return 0;
18151 }
18152
18153 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
18154   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
18155   test_symlinks();
18156   test_subdirectory_creation();
18157 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
18158   test_sqlite_open();
18159 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
18160   test_gcompris_locking();
18161   return 0;
18162 }
18163 </pre>
18164
18165 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
18166 this:</p>
18167
18168 <pre>
18169 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
18170 info: testing symlink creation
18171 info: testing subdirectory creation
18172 info: sqlite worked
18173 info: testing fcntl locking
18174   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18175   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18176   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
18177   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
18178   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
18179   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
18180 </pre>
18181
18182 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
18183 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
18184 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
18185 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
18186 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
18187 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
18188 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
18189 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
18190
18191 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
18192 it. :)</p>
18193
18194 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
18195 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
18196 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
18197
18198       </div>
18199       <div class="tags">
18200
18201
18202         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18203
18204
18205       </div>
18206     </div>
18207     <div class="padding"></div>
18208
18209     <div class="entry">
18210       <div class="title">
18211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
18212       </div>
18213       <div class="date">
18214          7th August 2010
18215       </div>
18216       <div class="body">
18217         <p>A few days ago, I
18218 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
18219 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
18220 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
18221 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
18222 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
18223 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
18224 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
18225 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
18226 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
18227
18228 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
18229 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
18230 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
18231 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
18232 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
18233 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
18234 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
18235 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
18236 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
18237 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
18238 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
18239 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
18240 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
18241 gave it a IP address.</p>
18242
18243 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
18244 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
18245 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
18246 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
18247 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
18248 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
18249 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
18250 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
18251
18252 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
18253 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
18254 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
18255 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
18256 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
18257 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
18258
18259 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
18260 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
18261 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
18262 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
18263 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
18264 with UID and GID values.</p>
18265
18266 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
18267 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18268
18269       </div>
18270       <div class="tags">
18271
18272
18273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18274
18275
18276       </div>
18277     </div>
18278     <div class="padding"></div>
18279
18280     <div class="entry">
18281       <div class="title">
18282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
18283       </div>
18284       <div class="date">
18285          3rd August 2010
18286       </div>
18287       <div class="body">
18288         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
18289 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
18290 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
18291 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
18292 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
18293 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
18294 servers.</p>
18295
18296 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
18297 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
18298 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
18299 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
18300 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
18301 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
18302 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
18303 .uio.no.</p>
18304
18305 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
18306 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
18307 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
18308 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
18309 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
18310 university servers.</p>
18311
18312 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
18313 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
18314 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
18315 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
18316 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
18317 uses.</p>
18318
18319       </div>
18320       <div class="tags">
18321
18322
18323         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18324
18325
18326       </div>
18327     </div>
18328     <div class="padding"></div>
18329
18330     <div class="entry">
18331       <div class="title">
18332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
18333       </div>
18334       <div class="date">
18335         27th July 2010
18336       </div>
18337       <div class="body">
18338         <p>I discovered this while doing
18339 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
18340 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
18341 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
18342 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
18343 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
18344
18345 <p>An example is from todays
18346 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
18347 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
18348 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
18349 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
18350 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
18351 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
18352 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
18353
18354 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
18355
18356 <blockquote><pre>
18357 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
18358  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
18359   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
18360 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
18361  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
18362 </pre></blockquote>
18363
18364 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
18365 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
18366 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
18367 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
18368 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
18369 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
18370 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
18371 of dependency loops.</p>
18372
18373 <p>Thanks to
18374 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
18375 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
18376 dependencies
18377 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
18378 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
18379
18380 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
18381 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
18382 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
18383 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
18384 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
18385 it.</p>
18386
18387       </div>
18388       <div class="tags">
18389
18390
18391         Tags: <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>.
18392
18393
18394       </div>
18395     </div>
18396     <div class="padding"></div>
18397
18398     <div class="entry">
18399       <div class="title">
18400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
18401       </div>
18402       <div class="date">
18403         27th July 2010
18404       </div>
18405       <div class="body">
18406         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
18407 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
18408 completed.</p>
18409
18410 <blockquote>
18411 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
18412 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
18413 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
18414 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
18415 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
18416 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
18417 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
18418 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
18419
18420 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
18421 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
18422 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
18423
18424 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
18425 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
18426 much.</p>
18427
18428 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
18429
18430 <ul>
18431 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
18432 <ul>
18433   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
18434          combination with some new artwork
18435   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
18436   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
18437   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
18438   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
18439   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
18440   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
18441   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
18442   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
18443   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
18444 </ul></li>
18445 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
18446     Enabled for:
18447 <ul>
18448   <li>PAM
18449   <li>LDAP
18450   <li>IMAP
18451   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
18452 </ul>
18453 </li>
18454 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
18455 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
18456     fetched from LDAP.</li>
18457 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
18458 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
18459 </ul>
18460 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
18461
18462 <ul>
18463 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
18464     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
18465     for testing.</li>
18466 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
18467     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
18468     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
18469 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
18470 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
18471 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
18472 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
18473     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
18474 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
18475     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
18476     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
18477 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
18478     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
18479     and help out with translations.</li>
18480 </ul>
18481
18482 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
18483
18484 <ul>
18485 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
18486 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
18487 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18488 </ul>
18489 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
18490
18491 <ul>
18492 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
18493 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
18494 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18495 </ul>
18496
18497 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
18498 get closer to the final release.</p>
18499
18500 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
18501
18502 <ul>
18503 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18504 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18505 </ul>
18506
18507 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
18508 <ul>
18509 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
18510 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
18511 </ul>
18512 <p>How to report bugs:
18513 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
18514
18515 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
18516 </blockquote>
18517
18518       </div>
18519       <div class="tags">
18520
18521
18522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18523
18524
18525       </div>
18526     </div>
18527     <div class="padding"></div>
18528
18529     <div class="entry">
18530       <div class="title">
18531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
18532       </div>
18533       <div class="date">
18534         25th July 2010
18535       </div>
18536       <div class="body">
18537         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
18538 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
18539 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
18540 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
18541 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
18542
18543 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
18544 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
18545 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
18546 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
18547 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
18548 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
18549 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
18550
18551 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
18552 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
18553 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
18554 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
18555 up. :)</p>
18556
18557 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
18558 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
18559 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
18560
18561 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
18562 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
18563 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
18564 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
18565 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
18566 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
18567 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
18568 release another day.</p>
18569
18570 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
18571 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
18572
18573       </div>
18574       <div class="tags">
18575
18576
18577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
18578
18579
18580       </div>
18581     </div>
18582     <div class="padding"></div>
18583
18584     <div class="entry">
18585       <div class="title">
18586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
18587       </div>
18588       <div class="date">
18589         18th July 2010
18590       </div>
18591       <div class="body">
18592         <p>Thanks to
18593 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
18594 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
18595 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
18596 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
18597 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
18598 only available from the development server, until more experience is
18599 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
18600
18601 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
18602 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
18603 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
18604 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
18605 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
18606 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
18607 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
18608
18609       </div>
18610       <div class="tags">
18611
18612
18613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18614
18615
18616       </div>
18617     </div>
18618     <div class="padding"></div>
18619
18620     <div class="entry">
18621       <div class="title">
18622         <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>
18623       </div>
18624       <div class="date">
18625         17th July 2010
18626       </div>
18627       <div class="body">
18628         <p>This is a
18629 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
18630 on my
18631 <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
18632 work</a> on
18633 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
18634 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
18635
18636 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
18637 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
18638 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
18639 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
18640
18641 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
18642 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
18643 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
18644
18645 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
18646
18647 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
18648 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
18649 the web.
18650
18651 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
18652 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
18653 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
18654 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
18655 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
18656 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
18657
18658 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
18659 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
18660 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
18661 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
18662 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
18663 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
18664 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
18665 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
18666 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
18667 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
18668 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
18669 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
18670 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
18671 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
18672 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
18673 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
18674
18675 <blockquote><pre>
18676 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18677   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18678   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18679   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18680   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18681   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18682   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18683
18684 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18685   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18686   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
18687   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
18688   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
18689   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
18690 </pre></blockquote>
18691
18692 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
18693 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
18694 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
18695 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18696 also exist.</p>
18697
18698 <blockquote><pre>
18699 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18700 objectclass: top
18701 objectclass: dnsdomain
18702 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18703 dc: tjener
18704 arecord: 10.0.2.2
18705 associateddomain: tjener.intern
18706
18707 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18708 objectclass: top
18709 objectclass: dnsdomain2
18710 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18711 dc: 2
18712 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
18713 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
18714 </pre></blockquote>
18715
18716 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
18717 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
18718 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
18719 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
18720 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
18721 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
18722 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
18723 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
18724 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
18725 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
18726 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
18727 instead.</p>
18728
18729 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
18730 like this:</p>
18731
18732 <blockquote><pre>
18733 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18734   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18735   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18736   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18737   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18738   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18739
18740 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18741   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
18742 </pre></blockquote>
18743
18744 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
18745 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
18746 reverse lookups.</p>
18747
18748 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
18749 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
18750 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
18751 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
18752
18753 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
18754 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
18755 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
18756
18757 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
18758 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
18759 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
18760 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
18761 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
18762
18763 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
18764 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
18765 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
18766 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
18767 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
18768
18769 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
18770 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
18771 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
18772 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
18773 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
18774 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
18775
18776 <blockquote><pre>
18777 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
18778     SUP top
18779     AUXILIARY
18780     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
18781           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
18782           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
18783           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
18784           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
18785     ))
18786 </pre></blockquote>
18787
18788 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
18789 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
18790 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
18791 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
18792 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
18793 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
18794
18795 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
18796
18797 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
18798 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
18799 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
18800 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
18801 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
18802
18803 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
18804 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
18805 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
18806 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
18807
18808 <blockquote><pre>
18809 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
18810 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
18811 </pre></blockquote>
18812
18813 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
18814 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
18815 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
18816 search result is this entry:</p>
18817
18818 <blockquote><pre>
18819 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18820 cn: dhcp
18821 objectClass: top
18822 objectClass: dhcpServer
18823 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18824 </pre></blockquote>
18825
18826 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
18827 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
18828 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
18829 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
18830 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
18831 The search result is this entry:</p>
18832
18833 <blockquote><pre>
18834 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18835 cn: DHCP Config
18836 objectClass: top
18837 objectClass: dhcpService
18838 objectClass: dhcpOptions
18839 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18840 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
18841 dhcpStatements: authoritative
18842 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
18843 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
18844 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
18845 </pre></blockquote>
18846
18847 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
18848 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
18849 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
18850 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
18851 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
18852 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
18853 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
18854 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
18855 related computer objects.</p>
18856
18857 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
18858 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
18859 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
18860 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
18861 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
18862 like:</p>
18863
18864 <blockquote><pre>
18865 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18866 cn: hostname
18867 objectClass: top
18868 objectClass: dhcpHost
18869 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18870 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
18871 </pre></blockquote>
18872
18873 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
18874 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
18875 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
18876 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
18877 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
18878 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
18879 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
18880 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
18881 structural object class.
18882
18883 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
18884
18885 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
18886 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
18887 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
18888 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
18889 in the configuration.</p>
18890
18891 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
18892 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
18893 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
18894 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
18895 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
18896 structure.</p>
18897
18898 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
18899 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
18900
18901 <blockquote><pre>
18902 ou=services
18903   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
18904     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
18905     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18906       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18907         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18908     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18909       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18910         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18911     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
18912       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
18913 </pre></blockquote>
18914
18915 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
18916 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
18917 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
18918 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
18919
18920 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
18921 like this:</p>
18922
18923 <blockquote><pre>
18924 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18925 dc: hostname
18926 objectClass: top
18927 objectClass: dhcpHost
18928 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18929 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
18930 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18931 arecord: 10.11.12.13
18932 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18933 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
18934 </pre></blockquote>
18935
18936 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
18937 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
18938 auxiliary object class.</p>
18939
18940       </div>
18941       <div class="tags">
18942
18943
18944         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>.
18945
18946
18947       </div>
18948     </div>
18949     <div class="padding"></div>
18950
18951     <div class="entry">
18952       <div class="title">
18953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
18954       </div>
18955       <div class="date">
18956         14th July 2010
18957       </div>
18958       <div class="body">
18959         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
18960 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
18961 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
18962 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
18963 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
18964
18965 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
18966 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
18967
18968 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
18969 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
18970 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
18971 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
18972 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
18973 to a slave DNS server.</p>
18974
18975 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
18976 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
18977 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
18978 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
18979 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
18980 seem to work.</p>
18981
18982 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
18983 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
18984 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
18985 this:</p>
18986
18987 <blockquote><pre>
18988   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18989   cn: hostname
18990   objectClass: dhcphost
18991   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18992   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
18993   associateddomain: hostname.intern
18994   arecord: 10.11.12.13
18995   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
18996   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
18997   ldapconfigsound: Y
18998 </pre></blockquote>
18999
19000 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
19001 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
19002 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
19003 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
19004
19005 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
19006 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
19007 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
19008 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
19009 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
19010 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
19011 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
19012 might be a good place to put it.</p>
19013
19014 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19015 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19016
19017       </div>
19018       <div class="tags">
19019
19020
19021         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>.
19022
19023
19024       </div>
19025     </div>
19026     <div class="padding"></div>
19027
19028     <div class="entry">
19029       <div class="title">
19030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
19031       </div>
19032       <div class="date">
19033         11th July 2010
19034       </div>
19035       <div class="body">
19036         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
19037 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
19038 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
19039 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
19040
19041 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
19042 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
19043 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
19044 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
19045 LTSP clients.</p>
19046
19047 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
19048 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
19049 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
19050
19051 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
19052 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
19053 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
19054
19055 <blockquote><pre>
19056 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
19057 #
19058 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
19059 #
19060 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
19061 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
19062 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
19063 #
19064 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
19065 # existence of attribute names.
19066 #
19067 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
19068 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
19069 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
19070 #
19071 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
19072 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
19073 #
19074 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
19075 #     SUP top
19076 #     AUXILIARY
19077 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
19078
19079 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
19080 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
19081     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
19082     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
19083         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
19084         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
19085             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
19086             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
19087             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
19088             # bass value on to clients
19089             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
19090         done
19091     done
19092 fi
19093 </pre></blockquote>
19094
19095 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
19096 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
19097 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
19098 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
19099 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
19100
19101 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19102 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19103
19104 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
19105 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
19106 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
19107 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
19108 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
19109 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
19110
19111       </div>
19112       <div class="tags">
19113
19114
19115         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>.
19116
19117
19118       </div>
19119     </div>
19120     <div class="padding"></div>
19121
19122     <div class="entry">
19123       <div class="title">
19124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19125       </div>
19126       <div class="date">
19127          9th July 2010
19128       </div>
19129       <div class="body">
19130         <p>Since
19131 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
19132 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
19133 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
19134 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
19135 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
19136 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
19137 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
19138 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
19139 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
19140 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
19141 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
19142 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
19143 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
19144
19145       </div>
19146       <div class="tags">
19147
19148
19149         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>.
19150
19151
19152       </div>
19153     </div>
19154     <div class="padding"></div>
19155
19156     <div class="entry">
19157       <div class="title">
19158         <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>
19159       </div>
19160       <div class="date">
19161          3rd July 2010
19162       </div>
19163       <div class="body">
19164         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
19165 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
19166 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
19167 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
19168 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
19169 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
19170 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
19171 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
19172
19173 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
19174 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
19175 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
19176 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
19177 publish the difference.</p>
19178
19179 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19180
19181 <blockquote><p>
19182   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19183   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
19184   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
19185   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19186   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
19187   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19188   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
19189   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
19190 </p></blockquote>
19191
19192 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19193
19194 <blockquote><p>
19195   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
19196   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
19197   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
19198   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
19199   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
19200   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
19201   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19202   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19203   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19204   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19205   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
19206   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
19207   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
19208   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
19209   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
19210   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19211   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
19212   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
19213   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
19214   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
19215 </p></blockquote>
19216
19217 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19218
19219 <blockquote><p>
19220   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
19221   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
19222   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19223   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19224   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
19225   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
19226   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
19227   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19228   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19229   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19230   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19231   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
19232   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
19233   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
19234   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
19235   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
19236   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
19237   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
19238   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
19239   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
19240   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
19241 </p></blockquote>
19242
19243 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19244
19245 <blockquote><p>
19246   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
19247   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
19248   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
19249 </p></blockquote>
19250
19251 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
19252 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
19253 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
19254 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
19255 the difference somewhat.
19256
19257       </div>
19258       <div class="tags">
19259
19260
19261         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>.
19262
19263
19264       </div>
19265     </div>
19266     <div class="padding"></div>
19267
19268     <div class="entry">
19269       <div class="title">
19270         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
19271       </div>
19272       <div class="date">
19273          1st July 2010
19274       </div>
19275       <div class="body">
19276         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
19277 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
19278 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
19279 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
19280 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
19281 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
19282 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
19283 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
19284 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
19285
19286 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19287
19288 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
19289 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
19290 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
19291 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
19292 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
19293 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
19294 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
19295 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
19296 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
19297 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
19298 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
19299 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
19300 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
19301 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
19302 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
19303
19304 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
19305
19306 <blockquote><pre>
19307 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
19308 </pre></blockquote>
19309
19310 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
19311 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
19312 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
19313 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
19314 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
19315 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
19316 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
19317 on how to get this working.</p>
19318
19319 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
19320 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
19321 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
19322 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
19323 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
19324 instructions I found in the
19325 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
19326 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
19327
19328 <blockquote><pre>
19329         debug-level             0
19330         reload-count            unlimited
19331         paranoia                no
19332
19333         enable-cache            passwd          yes
19334         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
19335         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
19336         suggested-size          passwd          211
19337         check-files             passwd          yes
19338         persistent              passwd          yes
19339         shared                  passwd          yes
19340         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
19341         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
19342
19343         enable-cache            group           yes
19344         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
19345         negative-time-to-live   group           20
19346         suggested-size          group           211
19347         check-files             group           yes
19348         persistent              group           yes
19349         shared                  group           yes
19350         max-db-size             group           33554432
19351         auto-propagate          group           yes
19352
19353         enable-cache            hosts           no
19354         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
19355         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
19356         suggested-size          hosts           211
19357         check-files             hosts           yes
19358         persistent              hosts           yes
19359         shared                  hosts           yes
19360         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
19361
19362         enable-cache            services        yes
19363         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
19364         negative-time-to-live   services        20
19365         suggested-size          services        211
19366         check-files             services        yes
19367         persistent              services        yes
19368         shared                  services        yes
19369         max-db-size             services        33554432
19370 </pre></blockquote>
19371
19372 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
19373 automatically like the one provided in
19374 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
19375 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
19376 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
19377 look like this:</p>
19378
19379 <blockquote><pre>
19380 passwd:         files ldap
19381 group:          files ldap
19382 shadow:         files ldap
19383 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
19384 networks:       files
19385 protocols:      files
19386 services:       files
19387 ethers:         files
19388 rpc:            files
19389 netgroup:       files ldap
19390 </pre></blockquote>
19391
19392 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
19393 shadow and netgroup.</p>
19394
19395 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
19396 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
19397 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
19398 attributes cached.
19399
19400 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
19401   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
19402
19403 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
19404 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
19405 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
19406 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
19407 discovered sssd.</p>
19408
19409 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
19410
19411 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
19412 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
19413 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
19414 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
19415 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
19416 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
19417 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
19418 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
19419 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
19420 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
19421 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
19422 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
19423 version 1.2 is now in testing.
19424
19425 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
19426 roaming setup I want</p>
19427
19428 <blockquote><pre>
19429 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
19430 </pre></blockquote>
19431
19432 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
19433 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
19434
19435 <blockquote><pre>
19436 [sssd]
19437 config_file_version = 2
19438 reconnection_retries = 3
19439 sbus_timeout = 30
19440 services = nss, pam
19441 domains = INTERN
19442
19443 [nss]
19444 filter_groups = root
19445 filter_users = root
19446 reconnection_retries = 3
19447
19448 [pam]
19449 reconnection_retries = 3
19450
19451 [domain/INTERN]
19452 enumerate = false
19453 cache_credentials = true
19454
19455 id_provider = ldap
19456 auth_provider = ldap
19457 chpass_provider = ldap
19458
19459 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
19460 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19461 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
19462 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
19463 </pre></blockquote>
19464
19465 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
19466 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
19467
19468 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
19469 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
19470 modify it manually.</p>
19471
19472 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19473 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19474
19475       </div>
19476       <div class="tags">
19477
19478
19479         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19480
19481
19482       </div>
19483     </div>
19484     <div class="padding"></div>
19485
19486     <div class="entry">
19487       <div class="title">
19488         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
19489       </div>
19490       <div class="date">
19491         28th June 2010
19492       </div>
19493       <div class="body">
19494         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
19495 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
19496 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
19497 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
19498 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
19499 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
19500 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
19501 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
19502 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
19503 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
19504
19505 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
19506 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
19507 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
19508 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
19509 released.</p>
19510
19511 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
19512 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
19513 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
19514 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
19515
19516 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
19517 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19518
19519 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
19520 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
19521 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
19522 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
19523 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
19524
19525       </div>
19526       <div class="tags">
19527
19528
19529         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>.
19530
19531
19532       </div>
19533     </div>
19534     <div class="padding"></div>
19535
19536     <div class="entry">
19537       <div class="title">
19538         <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>
19539       </div>
19540       <div class="date">
19541         24th June 2010
19542       </div>
19543       <div class="body">
19544         <p>A while back, I
19545 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
19546 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
19547 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
19548 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
19549
19550 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
19551 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
19552 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
19553 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
19554
19555 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
19556 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
19557 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
19558 Debian Edu.</p>
19559
19560 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
19561 the
19562 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
19563 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
19564 available today from IETF.</p>
19565
19566 <pre>
19567 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
19568 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
19569 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
19570  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
19571         NAME 'dhcpHost'
19572         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
19573 -       SUP top
19574 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
19575         MUST cn
19576         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
19577         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
19578 </pre>
19579
19580 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
19581 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
19582 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
19583
19584 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19585 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19586
19587       </div>
19588       <div class="tags">
19589
19590
19591         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>.
19592
19593
19594       </div>
19595     </div>
19596     <div class="padding"></div>
19597
19598     <div class="entry">
19599       <div class="title">
19600         <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>
19601       </div>
19602       <div class="date">
19603         16th June 2010
19604       </div>
19605       <div class="body">
19606         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
19607 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
19608 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
19609 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
19610 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
19611 this:
19612
19613 <blockquote><pre>
19614 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19615 tasksel --new-install
19616 </pre></blockquote>
19617
19618 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
19619 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
19620 any output what so ever.
19621
19622 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
19623 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
19624 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
19625 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
19626 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
19627 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
19628 code like this:
19629
19630 <blockquote><pre>
19631 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19632 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
19633 $cmd
19634 </pre></blockquote>
19635
19636 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
19637 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
19638 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
19639 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
19640 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
19641 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
19642 installation.</p>
19643
19644 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
19645 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
19646 like this.</p>
19647
19648       </div>
19649       <div class="tags">
19650
19651
19652         Tags: <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>.
19653
19654
19655       </div>
19656     </div>
19657     <div class="padding"></div>
19658
19659     <div class="entry">
19660       <div class="title">
19661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
19662       </div>
19663       <div class="date">
19664         13th June 2010
19665       </div>
19666       <div class="body">
19667         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
19668 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
19669 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
19670 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
19671 pages.</p>
19672
19673 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
19674 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
19675 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
19676 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
19677 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
19678 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
19679 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
19680 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
19681 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
19682 see how the project is doing.</p>
19683
19684 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
19685 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
19686 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
19687 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
19688 Windows.  This is great.</p>
19689
19690       </div>
19691       <div class="tags">
19692
19693
19694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
19695
19696
19697       </div>
19698     </div>
19699     <div class="padding"></div>
19700
19701     <div class="entry">
19702       <div class="title">
19703         <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>
19704       </div>
19705       <div class="date">
19706         13th June 2010
19707       </div>
19708       <div class="body">
19709         <p>My
19710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
19711 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
19712 finally made the upgrade logs available from
19713 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
19714 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
19715 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
19716 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
19717
19718 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
19719 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
19720 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
19721 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
19722 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
19723 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
19724 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
19725 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
19726
19727 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
19728 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
19729 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
19730 too surprising.</p>
19731
19732 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
19733 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
19734 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
19735 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
19736 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
19737 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
19738 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
19739 continue.</p>
19740
19741 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
19742 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
19743   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
19744   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
19745   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
19746   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
19747   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
19748   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19749   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19750   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19751   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19752   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19753   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19754   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19755   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19756   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19757   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19758   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19759   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19760   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19761   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19762   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19763   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19764   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19765   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19766   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19767   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19768   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19769   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
19770   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
19771
19772 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
19773
19774 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
19775   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
19776   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
19777   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
19778   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19779   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
19780   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
19781   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
19782   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
19783   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
19784   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19785   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
19786   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19787   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
19788   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
19789   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
19790   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
19791   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
19792   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
19793   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
19794   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
19795   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
19796   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
19797   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
19798   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19799   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
19800   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
19801   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
19802   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
19803   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19804   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19805   zip</p>
19806
19807 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
19808
19809 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
19810   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
19811   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
19812   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
19813   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
19814   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
19815   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19816   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19817   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19818   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19819   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19820   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19821   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19822   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19823   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19824   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19825   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19826   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19827   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19828   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19829   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19830   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19831   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19832   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19833   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19834   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19835   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19836   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
19837
19838 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
19839 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
19840   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19841   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
19842   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
19843   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19844   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
19845   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
19846   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19847   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
19848   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
19849   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
19850   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
19851   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
19852   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
19853   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
19854   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
19855   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19856   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19857   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19858   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
19859   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19860   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
19861   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
19862   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19863   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19864   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
19865   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
19866   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
19867   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
19868   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
19869   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
19870   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
19871   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
19872   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
19873   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19874   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19875   xulrunner-1.9</p>
19876
19877
19878       </div>
19879       <div class="tags">
19880
19881
19882         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>.
19883
19884
19885       </div>
19886     </div>
19887     <div class="padding"></div>
19888
19889     <div class="entry">
19890       <div class="title">
19891         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
19892       </div>
19893       <div class="date">
19894         11th June 2010
19895       </div>
19896       <div class="body">
19897         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
19898 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
19899 have been discovered and reported in the process
19900 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
19901 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
19902 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
19903 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
19904 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
19905
19906 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
19907 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
19908 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
19909 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
19910 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
19911 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
19912
19913 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
19914 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
19915 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19916 is created.  The bug report
19917 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
19918 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
19919 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
19920 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
19921 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
19922 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
19923 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
19924 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
19925 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
19926 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
19927 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
19928 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
19929 Debian Squeeze.</p>
19930
19931 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
19932 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
19933 trick:</p>
19934
19935 <blockquote><pre>
19936 #!/bin/sh
19937 set -ex
19938
19939 if [ "$1" ] ; then
19940     desktop=$1
19941 else
19942     desktop=gnome
19943 fi
19944
19945 from=lenny
19946 to=squeeze
19947
19948 exec &lt; /dev/null
19949 unset LANG
19950 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
19951 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
19952 fuser -mv .
19953 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
19954 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19955 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
19956 #!/bin/sh
19957 exit 101
19958 EOF
19959 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
19960 exit_cleanup() {
19961     umount $tmpdir/proc
19962 }
19963 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
19964 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
19965 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
19966
19967 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
19968
19969 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
19970 # to return the correct answers.
19971 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
19972     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
19973
19974 # Include the desktop and laptop task
19975 for test in desktop laptop ; do
19976     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
19977 #!/bin/sh
19978 exit 2
19979 EOF
19980     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
19981 done
19982
19983 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19984 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
19985 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
19986 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
19987
19988 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
19989 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19990 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19991 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
19992 fuser -mv
19993 </pre></blockquote>
19994
19995 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
19996 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
19997 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
19998 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
19999 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
20000 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
20001
20002 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
20003 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
20004 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
20005 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
20006 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
20007 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
20008 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
20009
20010 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
20011 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
20012 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
20013 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
20014 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
20015 packages.</p>
20016
20017       </div>
20018       <div class="tags">
20019
20020
20021         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>.
20022
20023
20024       </div>
20025     </div>
20026     <div class="padding"></div>
20027
20028     <div class="entry">
20029       <div class="title">
20030         <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>
20031       </div>
20032       <div class="date">
20033          6th June 2010
20034       </div>
20035       <div class="body">
20036         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
20037 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
20038 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
20039 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
20040 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
20041 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
20042 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
20043
20044 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
20045 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
20046 COLUMNS):</p>
20047
20048 <blockquote><pre>
20049 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
20050 previous=N
20051 PREVLEVEL=
20052 RUNLEVEL=
20053 runlevel=S
20054 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
20055 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
20056 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
20057 </pre></blockquote>
20058
20059 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
20060 script.</p>
20061
20062 <blockquote><pre>
20063 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
20064 previous=N
20065 PREVLEVEL=N
20066 RUNLEVEL=S
20067 runlevel=S
20068 </pre></blockquote>
20069
20070 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
20071 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
20072 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
20073
20074 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
20075 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
20076 choice.</p>
20077
20078       </div>
20079       <div class="tags">
20080
20081
20082         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>.
20083
20084
20085       </div>
20086     </div>
20087     <div class="padding"></div>
20088
20089     <div class="entry">
20090       <div class="title">
20091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
20092       </div>
20093       <div class="date">
20094          6th June 2010
20095       </div>
20096       <div class="body">
20097         <p>Via the
20098 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
20099 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
20100 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
20101 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
20102 following the standards wars of today.</p>
20103
20104       </div>
20105       <div class="tags">
20106
20107
20108         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>.
20109
20110
20111       </div>
20112     </div>
20113     <div class="padding"></div>
20114
20115     <div class="entry">
20116       <div class="title">
20117         <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>
20118       </div>
20119       <div class="date">
20120          3rd June 2010
20121       </div>
20122       <div class="body">
20123         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
20124 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
20125 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
20126 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
20127 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
20128
20129 <blockquote><pre>
20130 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
20131   vendor                    count
20132   Dell Computer Corporation     1
20133     PowerEdge 1750              1
20134   IBM                           1
20135     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
20136   Intel                         2
20137   [no-dmi-info]                 3
20138 maintainer:~#
20139 </pre></blockquote>
20140
20141 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
20142 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
20143 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
20144 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
20145 option to list the individual machines.</p>
20146
20147 <p>A larger list is
20148 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
20149 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
20150 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
20151 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
20152 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
20153 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
20154 collector.</p>
20155
20156       </div>
20157       <div class="tags">
20158
20159
20160         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>.
20161
20162
20163       </div>
20164     </div>
20165     <div class="padding"></div>
20166
20167     <div class="entry">
20168       <div class="title">
20169         <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>
20170       </div>
20171       <div class="date">
20172          1st June 2010
20173       </div>
20174       <div class="body">
20175         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
20176 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
20177 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
20178 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
20179 wait.</p>
20180
20181 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
20182 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
20183 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
20184 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
20185 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
20186 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
20187
20188 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
20189 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
20190 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
20191 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
20192 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
20193 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
20194 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
20195 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
20196
20197 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
20198
20199       </div>
20200       <div class="tags">
20201
20202
20203         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>.
20204
20205
20206       </div>
20207     </div>
20208     <div class="padding"></div>
20209
20210     <div class="entry">
20211       <div class="title">
20212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
20213       </div>
20214       <div class="date">
20215         27th May 2010
20216       </div>
20217       <div class="body">
20218         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
20219 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
20220 issues are known and should be solved:
20221
20222 <p><ul>
20223
20224 <li>The wicd package seen to
20225 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
20226 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
20227 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
20228 seem to be on the case.</li>
20229
20230 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
20231 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
20232 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
20233 maintainer is on the case.</li>
20234
20235 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
20236 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
20237 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
20238 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
20239 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
20240 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
20241 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
20242 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
20243
20244 </ul></p>
20245
20246 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
20247 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
20248 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
20249 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
20250
20251 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20252 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20253 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20254 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20255
20256 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
20257
20258       </div>
20259       <div class="tags">
20260
20261
20262         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>.
20263
20264
20265       </div>
20266     </div>
20267     <div class="padding"></div>
20268
20269     <div class="entry">
20270       <div class="title">
20271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
20272       </div>
20273       <div class="date">
20274         22nd May 2010
20275       </div>
20276       <div class="body">
20277         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
20278 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
20279 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
20280 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
20281
20282 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
20283 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
20284 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
20285 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
20286 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
20287 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
20288 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
20289 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
20290 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
20291 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
20292 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
20293 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
20294 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
20295 going to work.</p>
20296
20297 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
20298 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
20299 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
20300 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
20301 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
20302 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
20303 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
20304 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
20305 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
20306 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
20307 Edu.</p>
20308
20309 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
20310 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
20311 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
20312 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
20313 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
20314 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
20315
20316 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
20317 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
20318
20319       </div>
20320       <div class="tags">
20321
20322
20323         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>.
20324
20325
20326       </div>
20327     </div>
20328     <div class="padding"></div>
20329
20330     <div class="entry">
20331       <div class="title">
20332         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
20333       </div>
20334       <div class="date">
20335         19th May 2010
20336       </div>
20337       <div class="body">
20338         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
20339 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
20340 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
20341 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
20342 into unstable.  The
20343 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
20344 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
20345 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
20346 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
20347 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20348 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
20349 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
20350
20351 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
20352 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
20353 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
20354 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
20355 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
20356 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
20357 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
20358 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
20359
20360 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
20361 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
20362 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
20363 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
20364 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
20365 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
20366 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
20367
20368 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
20369 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
20370 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
20371 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
20372 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
20373 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
20374 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
20375 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
20376 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
20377 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
20378 on the home directory servers.</p>
20379
20380 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
20381 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
20382 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
20383 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
20384 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
20385 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
20386
20387 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20388 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20389
20390       </div>
20391       <div class="tags">
20392
20393
20394         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20395
20396
20397       </div>
20398     </div>
20399     <div class="padding"></div>
20400
20401     <div class="entry">
20402       <div class="title">
20403         <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>
20404       </div>
20405       <div class="date">
20406         14th May 2010
20407       </div>
20408       <div class="body">
20409         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
20410 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
20411 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
20412 expected, if I am to believe the
20413 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20414 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
20415 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
20416 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
20417 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
20418 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
20419 version.</p>
20420
20421 More information about
20422 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20423 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
20424 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
20425 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20426
20427 <blockquote><pre>
20428 CONCURRENCY=none
20429 </pre></blockquote>
20430
20431 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20432 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20433 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20434 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20435
20436       </div>
20437       <div class="tags">
20438
20439
20440         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>.
20441
20442
20443       </div>
20444     </div>
20445     <div class="padding"></div>
20446
20447     <div class="entry">
20448       <div class="title">
20449         <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>
20450       </div>
20451       <div class="date">
20452         14th May 2010
20453       </div>
20454       <div class="body">
20455         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
20456 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
20457 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
20458 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
20459 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
20460 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
20461 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
20462 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
20463
20464 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
20465 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
20466 this on the collector host:</p>
20467
20468 <blockquote><pre>
20469 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
20470 </pre></blockquote>
20471
20472 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
20473 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
20474
20475 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
20476 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
20477 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
20478 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
20479 written yet.</p>
20480
20481       </div>
20482       <div class="tags">
20483
20484
20485         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>.
20486
20487
20488       </div>
20489     </div>
20490     <div class="padding"></div>
20491
20492     <div class="entry">
20493       <div class="title">
20494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
20495       </div>
20496       <div class="date">
20497         13th May 2010
20498       </div>
20499       <div class="body">
20500         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
20501 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
20502 has been
20503 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
20504
20505 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
20506 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
20507 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
20508 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
20509 based boot system.  Tollef is
20510 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
20511 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
20512 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
20513 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
20514 at the moment do not.</p>
20515
20516 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
20517 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
20518 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
20519 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
20520 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
20521 way forward.</p>
20522
20523 <p>In the mean time, based on the
20524 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20525 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
20526 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
20527 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
20528 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
20529 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
20530 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
20531 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
20532
20533       </div>
20534       <div class="tags">
20535
20536
20537         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>.
20538
20539
20540       </div>
20541     </div>
20542     <div class="padding"></div>
20543
20544     <div class="entry">
20545       <div class="title">
20546         <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>
20547       </div>
20548       <div class="date">
20549          6th May 2010
20550       </div>
20551       <div class="body">
20552         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
20553 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
20554 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
20555 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
20556 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20557 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
20558 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
20559
20560 <blockquote><pre>
20561 CONCURRENCY=makefile
20562 </pre></blockquote>
20563
20564 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
20565 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
20566 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
20567 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
20568 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
20569 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
20570 make this happen.</p>
20571
20572 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
20573 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
20574 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
20575 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
20576 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
20577
20578 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
20579 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
20580 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
20581 fix the remaining issues.</p>
20582
20583 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20584 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20585 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20586 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
20587
20588       </div>
20589       <div class="tags">
20590
20591
20592         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>.
20593
20594
20595       </div>
20596     </div>
20597     <div class="padding"></div>
20598
20599     <div class="entry">
20600       <div class="title">
20601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
20602       </div>
20603       <div class="date">
20604          2nd May 2010
20605       </div>
20606       <div class="body">
20607         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
20608 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
20609 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
20610
20611 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
20612 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
20613 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
20614 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
20615 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
20616
20617 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
20618 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
20619
20620 <blockquote><pre>
20621 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20622 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
20623 Password expires                                        : never
20624 Password inactive                                       : never
20625 Account expires                                         : never
20626 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20627 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
20628 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20629 root@tjener:~#
20630 </pre></blockquote>
20631
20632 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
20633 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
20634 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
20635 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
20636 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
20637 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
20638
20639 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
20640 intended:</p>
20641
20642 <blockquote><pre>
20643 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
20644 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20645 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
20646 Password expires                                        : never
20647 Password inactive                                       : never
20648 Account expires                                         : never
20649 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
20650 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
20651 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
20652 root@tjener:~#
20653 </pre></blockquote>
20654
20655 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
20656 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
20657 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
20658
20659 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
20660 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
20661
20662 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
20663 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20664
20665 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
20666 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
20667 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
20668 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
20669 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
20670 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
20671 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
20672
20673 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
20674 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
20675 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
20676 change.</p>
20677
20678       </div>
20679       <div class="tags">
20680
20681
20682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
20683
20684
20685       </div>
20686     </div>
20687     <div class="padding"></div>
20688
20689     <div class="entry">
20690       <div class="title">
20691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
20692       </div>
20693       <div class="date">
20694         28th April 2010
20695       </div>
20696       <div class="body">
20697         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
20698 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
20699 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
20700 and go.</p>
20701
20702 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
20703 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
20704 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
20705 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
20706
20707 <ul>
20708
20709  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
20710    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
20711    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
20712    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
20713    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
20714    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
20715    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
20716    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
20717    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
20718    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
20719    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
20720    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
20721
20722  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
20723    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
20724    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
20725    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
20726    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
20727    or the Fedora developed
20728    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
20729    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
20730
20731  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
20732    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
20733    directory, using unison.</li>
20734
20735  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
20736    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
20737    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
20738    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
20739    implemented.</li>
20740
20741  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
20742    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
20743
20744  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
20745    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
20746    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
20747
20748 </ul>
20749
20750 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
20751 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
20752 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
20753 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
20754 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
20755 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
20756 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
20757 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
20758 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
20759
20760 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20761 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20762
20763       </div>
20764       <div class="tags">
20765
20766
20767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20768
20769
20770       </div>
20771     </div>
20772     <div class="padding"></div>
20773
20774     <div class="entry">
20775       <div class="title">
20776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
20777       </div>
20778       <div class="date">
20779         19th April 2010
20780       </div>
20781       <div class="body">
20782         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
20783 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
20784 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
20785 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
20786 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
20787 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
20788 restrictions on the web, for example from
20789 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
20790 epub-version from
20791 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
20792 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
20793 strongly recommend this book.</p>
20794
20795       </div>
20796       <div class="tags">
20797
20798
20799         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20800
20801
20802       </div>
20803     </div>
20804     <div class="padding"></div>
20805
20806     <div class="entry">
20807       <div class="title">
20808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
20809       </div>
20810       <div class="date">
20811         14th April 2010
20812       </div>
20813       <div class="body">
20814         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
20815 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
20816 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
20817 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
20818 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
20819 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
20820 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
20821 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
20822 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
20823
20824 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
20825 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
20826 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
20827 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
20828 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
20829
20830 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
20831 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
20832
20833 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
20834 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
20835 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
20836 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
20837 to work properly.</p>
20838
20839 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
20840 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
20841 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
20842 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
20843 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
20844 time.</p>
20845
20846 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
20847 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
20848 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
20849 up in a few days.</p>
20850
20851       </div>
20852       <div class="tags">
20853
20854
20855         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20856
20857
20858       </div>
20859     </div>
20860     <div class="padding"></div>
20861
20862     <div class="entry">
20863       <div class="title">
20864         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
20865       </div>
20866       <div class="date">
20867          6th March 2010
20868       </div>
20869       <div class="body">
20870         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
20871 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
20872 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
20873 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
20874 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
20875 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
20876
20877 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
20878 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
20879 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
20880 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
20881
20882 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
20883 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
20884 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
20885 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
20886 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
20887 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
20888
20889       </div>
20890       <div class="tags">
20891
20892
20893         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20894
20895
20896       </div>
20897     </div>
20898     <div class="padding"></div>
20899
20900     <div class="entry">
20901       <div class="title">
20902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
20903       </div>
20904       <div class="date">
20905         11th February 2010
20906       </div>
20907       <div class="body">
20908         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
20909 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
20910 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
20911 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
20912 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
20913 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
20914 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
20915
20916 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
20917
20918 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
20919 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
20920 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
20921 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
20922
20923       </div>
20924       <div class="tags">
20925
20926
20927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20928
20929
20930       </div>
20931     </div>
20932     <div class="padding"></div>
20933
20934     <div class="entry">
20935       <div class="title">
20936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
20937       </div>
20938       <div class="date">
20939         27th January 2010
20940       </div>
20941       <div class="body">
20942         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
20943 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
20944 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
20945 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
20946 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
20947 further.</p>
20948
20949 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
20950 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
20951 configured to be a server for the
20952 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
20953 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
20954 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
20955 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
20956 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
20957 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
20958 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
20959 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
20960 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
20961 and Nagios configuration.</p>
20962
20963 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
20964 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
20965 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
20966 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
20967
20968 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
20969 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
20970 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
20971 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
20972 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
20973 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
20974 the machine.</p>
20975
20976 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
20977 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
20978 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
20979 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
20980
20981 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
20982 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
20983 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
20984 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
20985 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
20986 everything is taken care of.</p>
20987
20988       </div>
20989       <div class="tags">
20990
20991
20992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
20993
20994
20995       </div>
20996     </div>
20997     <div class="padding"></div>
20998
20999     <div class="entry">
21000       <div class="title">
21001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
21002       </div>
21003       <div class="date">
21004         12th August 2009
21005       </div>
21006       <div class="body">
21007         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
21008 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
21009 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
21010 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
21011
21012 <table>
21013 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21014 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21015 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
21016 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
21017 </table>
21018
21019 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
21020 got these numbers:</p>
21021
21022 <table>
21023 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21024 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
21025 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
21026 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
21027 </table>
21028
21029 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
21030
21031 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
21032 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
21033 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
21034 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
21035 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
21036
21037
21038 <table>
21039 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21040 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
21041 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
21042 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
21043 </table>
21044
21045 <p>And with 'site:no':
21046
21047 <table>
21048 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
21049 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
21050 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
21051 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
21052 </table>
21053
21054 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
21055 numbers.</p>
21056
21057       </div>
21058       <div class="tags">
21059
21060
21061         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21062
21063
21064       </div>
21065     </div>
21066     <div class="padding"></div>
21067
21068     <div class="entry">
21069       <div class="title">
21070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
21071       </div>
21072       <div class="date">
21073          8th August 2009
21074       </div>
21075       <div class="body">
21076         <p>According to <a
21077 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
21078 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
21079 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
21080 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
21081 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
21082 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
21083 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
21084 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
21085 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
21086 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
21087
21088 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
21089 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
21090 seminar this autumn.</p>
21091
21092       </div>
21093       <div class="tags">
21094
21095
21096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
21097
21098
21099       </div>
21100     </div>
21101     <div class="padding"></div>
21102
21103     <div class="entry">
21104       <div class="title">
21105         <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>
21106       </div>
21107       <div class="date">
21108         27th July 2009
21109       </div>
21110       <div class="body">
21111         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
21112 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
21113 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
21114 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
21115 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
21116 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
21117 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
21118
21119 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
21120 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
21121 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
21122
21123       </div>
21124       <div class="tags">
21125
21126
21127         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>.
21128
21129
21130       </div>
21131     </div>
21132     <div class="padding"></div>
21133
21134     <div class="entry">
21135       <div class="title">
21136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
21137       </div>
21138       <div class="date">
21139         22nd July 2009
21140       </div>
21141       <div class="body">
21142         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
21143 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
21144 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
21145 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
21146 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
21147 the package up to date.</p>
21148
21149 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
21150 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
21151 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
21152 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
21153 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
21154 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
21155 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
21156 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
21157 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
21158 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
21159 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
21160 working on the future release.</p>
21161
21162 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
21163 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
21164
21165       </div>
21166       <div class="tags">
21167
21168
21169         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>.
21170
21171
21172       </div>
21173     </div>
21174     <div class="padding"></div>
21175
21176     <div class="entry">
21177       <div class="title">
21178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
21179       </div>
21180       <div class="date">
21181         24th June 2009
21182       </div>
21183       <div class="body">
21184         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
21185 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
21186 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
21187 funded
21188 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
21189 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
21190 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
21191 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
21192 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
21193 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
21194
21195 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
21196 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
21197 boot:</p>
21198
21199 <ul>
21200
21201 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
21202
21203 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
21204    clock is in UTC.</li>
21205
21206 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
21207    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
21208    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
21209
21210 </ul>
21211
21212 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
21213 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
21214 Villegas</a>.
21215
21216 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
21217 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
21218 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
21219 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
21220 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
21221 using this.</p>
21222
21223 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
21224 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
21225 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
21226 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
21227 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
21228 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
21229 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
21230
21231       </div>
21232       <div class="tags">
21233
21234
21235         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>.
21236
21237
21238       </div>
21239     </div>
21240     <div class="padding"></div>
21241
21242     <div class="entry">
21243       <div class="title">
21244         <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>
21245       </div>
21246       <div class="date">
21247          2nd May 2009
21248       </div>
21249       <div class="body">
21250         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
21251 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
21252 do not yet know them.</p>
21253
21254 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
21255 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
21256 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
21257 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
21258 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
21259 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
21260 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
21261 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
21262 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
21263 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
21264 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
21265
21266 <p>The second one is
21267 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
21268 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
21269 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
21270 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
21271 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
21272 and the company behind it is running
21273 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
21274 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
21275 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
21276 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
21277 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
21278 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
21279 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
21280 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
21281
21282 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
21283 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
21284 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
21285 surrounded by today.</p>
21286
21287       </div>
21288       <div class="tags">
21289
21290
21291         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21292
21293
21294       </div>
21295     </div>
21296     <div class="padding"></div>
21297
21298     <div class="entry">
21299       <div class="title">
21300         <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>
21301       </div>
21302       <div class="date">
21303         28th April 2009
21304       </div>
21305       <div class="body">
21306         <p>Julien Blache
21307 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
21308 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
21309 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
21310 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
21311 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
21312 properties.</p>
21313
21314       </div>
21315       <div class="tags">
21316
21317
21318         Tags: <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>.
21319
21320
21321       </div>
21322     </div>
21323     <div class="padding"></div>
21324
21325     <div class="entry">
21326       <div class="title">
21327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
21328       </div>
21329       <div class="date">
21330          5th April 2009
21331       </div>
21332       <div class="body">
21333         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
21334 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
21335 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
21336 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
21337 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
21338 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
21339 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
21340 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
21341
21342 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
21343 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
21344 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
21345   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21346   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
21347
21348 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
21349 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
21350 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
21351 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
21352
21353 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
21354 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
21355 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
21356 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
21357
21358 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
21359 set -e
21360 URL="$1"
21361 SAVEFILE="$2"
21362 DURATION="$3"
21363 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
21364   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
21365   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
21366 pid=$!
21367 sleep $DURATION
21368 kill $pid
21369 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
21370
21371       </div>
21372       <div class="tags">
21373
21374
21375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21376
21377
21378       </div>
21379     </div>
21380     <div class="padding"></div>
21381
21382     <div class="entry">
21383       <div class="title">
21384         <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>
21385       </div>
21386       <div class="date">
21387         30th March 2009
21388       </div>
21389       <div class="body">
21390         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
21391 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
21392 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
21393 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
21394 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
21395 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
21396 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
21397 application.</p>
21398
21399 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
21400 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
21401 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
21402 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
21403 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
21404 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
21405 blocked from doing so.</p>
21406
21407 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
21408 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
21409 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
21410 requirements change.</p>
21411
21412 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
21413 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
21414 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
21415
21416       </div>
21417       <div class="tags">
21418
21419
21420         Tags: <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>.
21421
21422
21423       </div>
21424     </div>
21425     <div class="padding"></div>
21426
21427     <div class="entry">
21428       <div class="title">
21429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
21430       </div>
21431       <div class="date">
21432         29th March 2009
21433       </div>
21434       <div class="body">
21435         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
21436 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
21437 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
21438 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
21439 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
21440 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
21441 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
21442 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
21443 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
21444 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
21445 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
21446 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
21447 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
21448 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
21449 now. :)</p>
21450
21451       </div>
21452       <div class="tags">
21453
21454
21455         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>.
21456
21457
21458       </div>
21459     </div>
21460     <div class="padding"></div>
21461
21462     <div class="entry">
21463       <div class="title">
21464         <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>
21465       </div>
21466       <div class="date">
21467         29th March 2009
21468       </div>
21469       <div class="body">
21470         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
21471 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
21472 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
21473 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
21474 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
21475 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
21476
21477 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
21478 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
21479 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
21480 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
21481 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
21482 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
21483 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
21484 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
21485 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
21486 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
21487 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
21488 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
21489 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
21490
21491 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
21492 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
21493 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
21494 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
21495
21496 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
21497 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
21498
21499 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
21500 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
21501 new IETF work group?</p>
21502
21503       </div>
21504       <div class="tags">
21505
21506
21507         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>.
21508
21509
21510       </div>
21511     </div>
21512     <div class="padding"></div>
21513
21514     <div class="entry">
21515       <div class="title">
21516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
21517       </div>
21518       <div class="date">
21519         28th February 2009
21520       </div>
21521       <div class="body">
21522         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
21523 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
21524 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
21525 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
21526 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
21527 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
21528 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
21529 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
21530 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
21531 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
21532 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
21533 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
21534 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
21535 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
21536 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
21537 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
21538 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
21539 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
21540 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
21541 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
21542 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
21543 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
21544 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
21545 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
21546 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
21547 machine.</p>
21548
21549 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
21550 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
21551 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
21552 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
21553 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
21554 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
21555 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
21556
21557 <pre>
21558 use LWP::Simple;
21559 use POSIX;
21560 use WWW::Mechanize;
21561 use Date::Parse;
21562 [...]
21563 sub get_support_info {
21564     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
21565     my $str;
21566
21567     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
21568         # fetch website from Dell support
21569         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
21570         my $webpage = get($url);
21571         return undef unless ($webpage);
21572
21573         my $daysleft = -1;
21574         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
21575         foreach my $line (@lines) {
21576             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
21577             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21578             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
21579
21580             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
21581             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
21582             my $lastend = "";
21583             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
21584                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
21585
21586                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21587                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21588                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21589                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
21590                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
21591                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
21592                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
21593             }
21594             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21595             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21596                 if ($lastend lt $today);
21597         }
21598     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
21599         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
21600         my $url =
21601             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
21602         $mech->get($url);
21603         my $fields = {
21604             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
21605             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
21606             'country' => 'NO',
21607             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
21608             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
21609         };
21610         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
21611                             fields      => $fields );
21612         # Next step is screen scraping
21613         my $content = $mech->content();
21614
21615         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21616         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21617         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21618         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21619
21620         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21621
21622         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
21623             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
21624                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
21625             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
21626             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21627                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21628             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21629                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
21630
21631             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
21632
21633             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21634                 if ($end lt $today);
21635         }
21636     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
21637         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
21638         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
21639         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
21640             my $content =
21641                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
21642             if ($content) {
21643                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
21644                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21645                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21646                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21647
21648                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
21649                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
21650
21651                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
21652
21653                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21654                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21655                     if ($end lt $today);
21656             }
21657         }
21658     }
21659     return $str;
21660 }
21661 </pre>
21662
21663 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
21664 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
21665 from dmidecode.</p>
21666
21667 <pre>
21668 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
21669                        "447707-B21");
21670 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
21671 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
21672                        "1234567");
21673 </pre>
21674
21675 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
21676 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
21677
21678 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
21679 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
21680 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
21681 do so.</p>
21682
21683       </div>
21684       <div class="tags">
21685
21686
21687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21688
21689
21690       </div>
21691     </div>
21692     <div class="padding"></div>
21693
21694     <div class="entry">
21695       <div class="title">
21696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
21697       </div>
21698       <div class="date">
21699         20th February 2009
21700       </div>
21701       <div class="body">
21702         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
21703 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
21704 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
21705 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
21706 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
21707 the "missing" computer.</p>
21708
21709 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
21710 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
21711 code blocks as defined in the
21712 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
21713 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
21714 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
21715 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
21716 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
21717 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
21718 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
21719 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
21720 codes.</p>
21721
21722 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
21723 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
21724 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
21725 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
21726 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
21727 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
21728
21729 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
21730 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
21731 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
21732 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
21733 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
21734 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
21735 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
21736 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
21737 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
21738 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
21739
21740 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
21741 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
21742 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
21743
21744       </div>
21745       <div class="tags">
21746
21747
21748         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21749
21750
21751       </div>
21752     </div>
21753     <div class="padding"></div>
21754
21755     <div class="entry">
21756       <div class="title">
21757         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
21758       </div>
21759       <div class="date">
21760         17th January 2009
21761       </div>
21762       <div class="body">
21763         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
21764 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
21765 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
21766 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
21767 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
21768 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
21769 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
21770 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
21771 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
21772 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
21773 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
21774 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
21775 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
21776 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
21777
21778 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
21779 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
21780 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
21781 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
21782 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
21783 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
21784 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
21785 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
21786 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
21787 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
21788 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
21789 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
21790 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
21791 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
21792 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
21793 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
21794 playing when the download is done.</p>
21795
21796 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
21797 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
21798 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
21799 too.</p>
21800
21801 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
21802 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
21803 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
21804 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
21805
21806       </div>
21807       <div class="tags">
21808
21809
21810         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21811
21812
21813       </div>
21814     </div>
21815     <div class="padding"></div>
21816
21817     <div class="entry">
21818       <div class="title">
21819         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
21820       </div>
21821       <div class="date">
21822         28th December 2008
21823       </div>
21824       <div class="body">
21825         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
21826 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
21827 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
21828 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
21829 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
21830 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
21831 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
21832 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
21833 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
21834 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
21835 source, sink and mixer applications and
21836 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
21837 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
21838 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
21839 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
21840 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
21841 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
21842 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
21843 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
21844 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
21845
21846 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
21847 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
21848 larger stick as well.</p>
21849
21850       </div>
21851       <div class="tags">
21852
21853
21854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21855
21856
21857       </div>
21858     </div>
21859     <div class="padding"></div>
21860
21861     <div class="entry">
21862       <div class="title">
21863         <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>
21864       </div>
21865       <div class="date">
21866          7th December 2008
21867       </div>
21868       <div class="body">
21869         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
21870 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
21871 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
21872 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
21873 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
21874 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
21875 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
21876 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
21877
21878 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
21879 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
21880 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
21881 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
21882 of these cards.</p>
21883
21884       </div>
21885       <div class="tags">
21886
21887
21888         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>.
21889
21890
21891       </div>
21892     </div>
21893     <div class="padding"></div>
21894
21895     <div class="entry">
21896       <div class="title">
21897         <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>
21898       </div>
21899       <div class="date">
21900         25th November 2008
21901       </div>
21902       <div class="body">
21903         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
21904 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
21905 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
21906 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
21907 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
21908 notes are available on
21909 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
21910 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
21911 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
21912 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
21913 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
21914 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
21915 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
21916 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
21917 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
21918
21919 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
21920 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
21921
21922       </div>
21923       <div class="tags">
21924
21925
21926         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>.
21927
21928
21929       </div>
21930     </div>
21931     <div class="padding"></div>
21932
21933     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
21934     <div id="sidebar">
21935
21936
21937
21938 <h2>Archive</h2>
21939 <ul>
21940
21941 <li>2015
21942 <ul>
21943
21944 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
21945
21946 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
21947
21948 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
21949
21950 </ul></li>
21951
21952 <li>2014
21953 <ul>
21954
21955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
21956
21957 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
21958
21959 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
21960
21961 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
21962
21963 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
21964
21965 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
21966
21967 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
21968
21969 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
21970
21971 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
21972
21973 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
21974
21975 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
21976
21977 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
21978
21979 </ul></li>
21980
21981 <li>2013
21982 <ul>
21983
21984 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
21985
21986 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
21987
21988 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
21989
21990 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
21991
21992 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
21993
21994 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
21995
21996 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
21997
21998 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
21999
22000 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
22001
22002 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
22003
22004 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
22005
22006 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22007
22008 </ul></li>
22009
22010 <li>2012
22011 <ul>
22012
22013 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
22014
22015 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
22016
22017 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
22018
22019 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
22020
22021 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
22022
22023 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
22024
22025 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
22026
22027 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22028
22029 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
22030
22031 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
22032
22033 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
22034
22035 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22036
22037 </ul></li>
22038
22039 <li>2011
22040 <ul>
22041
22042 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
22043
22044 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
22045
22046 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
22047
22048 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
22049
22050 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
22051
22052 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
22053
22054 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
22055
22056 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
22057
22058 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
22059
22060 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22061
22062 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22063
22064 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
22065
22066 </ul></li>
22067
22068 <li>2010
22069 <ul>
22070
22071 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
22072
22073 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
22074
22075 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
22076
22077 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
22078
22079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22080
22081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
22082
22083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
22084
22085 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
22086
22087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
22088
22089 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
22090
22091 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
22092
22093 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
22094
22095 </ul></li>
22096
22097 <li>2009
22098 <ul>
22099
22100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
22101
22102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
22103
22104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
22105
22106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
22107
22108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
22109
22110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
22111
22112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
22113
22114 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
22115
22116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
22117
22118 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
22119
22120 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
22121
22122 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
22123
22124 </ul></li>
22125
22126 <li>2008
22127 <ul>
22128
22129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
22130
22131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
22132
22133 </ul></li>
22134
22135 </ul>
22136
22137
22138
22139 <h2>Tags</h2>
22140 <ul>
22141
22142  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
22143
22144  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
22145
22146  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
22147
22148  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
22149
22150  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
22151
22152  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
22153
22154  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
22155
22156  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
22157
22158  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (109)</a></li>
22159
22160  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (151)</a></li>
22161
22162  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
22163
22164  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
22165
22166  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (12)</a></li>
22167
22168  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
22169
22170  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (271)</a></li>
22171
22172  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (22)</a></li>
22173
22174  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
22175
22176  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (14)</a></li>
22177
22178  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
22179
22180  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (14)</a></li>
22181
22182  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (41)</a></li>
22183
22184  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
22185
22186  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
22187
22188  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
22189
22190  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
22191
22192  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
22193
22194  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
22195
22196  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
22197
22198  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (32)</a></li>
22199
22200  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (260)</a></li>
22201
22202  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (175)</a></li>
22203
22204  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (15)</a></li>
22205
22206  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
22207
22208  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (51)</a></li>
22209
22210  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (83)</a></li>
22211
22212  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
22213
22214  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
22215
22216  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
22217
22218  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
22219
22220  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
22221
22222  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
22223
22224  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
22225
22226  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
22227
22228  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
22229
22230  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
22231
22232  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
22233
22234  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (46)</a></li>
22235
22236  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
22237
22238  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
22239
22240  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (30)</a></li>
22241
22242  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
22243
22244  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
22245
22246  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
22247
22248  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (50)</a></li>
22249
22250  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
22251
22252  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (35)</a></li>
22253
22254 </ul>
22255
22256
22257     </div>
22258     <p style="text-align: right">
22259  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
22260 </p>
22261
22262   </body>
22263 </html>