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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged isenkram</title>
                <description>Entries tagged isenkram</description>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>Some of my 2024 free software activities</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_of_my_2024_free_software_activities.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Some_of_my_2024_free_software_activities.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It is a while since I posted a summary of the free software and
open culture activities and projects I have worked on.  Here is a
quick summary of the major ones from last year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I guess the biggest project of the year has been migrating orphaned
packages in Debian without a version control system to have a git
repository on salsa.debian.org.  When I started in April around 450
the orphaned packages needed git.  I&#39;ve since migrated around 250 of
the packages to a salsa git repository, and around 40 packages were
left when I took a break.  Not sure who did the around 160 conversions
I was not involved in, but I am very glad I got some help on the
project.  I stopped partly because some of the remaining packages
needed more disk space to build than I have available on my
development machine, and partly because some had a strange build setup
I could not figure out.  I had a time budget of 20 minutes per
package, if the package proved problematic and likely to take longer,
I moved to another package.  Might continue later, if I manage to free
up some disk space.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another rather big project was the translation to Norwegian Bokmål
and publishing of the first book ever published by a Sámi woman, the
«&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/publisher/#infoerlifellerdoed2024&quot;&gt;Møter
vi liv eller død?&lt;/a&gt;» book by Elsa Laua, with a PD0 and CC-BY
license.  I released it during the summer, and to my surprise it has
already sold several copies.  As I suck at marketing, I did not expect
to sell any.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A smaller, but more long term project (for more than 10 years now),
and related to orphaned packages in Debian, is my project to ensure a
simple way to install hardware related packages in Debian when the
relevant hardware is present in a machine.  It made a fairly big
advance forward last year, partly because I have been poking and
begging package maintainers and upstream developers to include
AppStream metadata XML in their packages.  I&#39;ve also released a few
new versions of the isenkram system with some robustness improvements.
Today 127 packages in Debian provide such information, allowing
&lt;tt&gt;isenkram-lookup&lt;/tt&gt; to propose them.  Will keep pushing until the
around 35 package names currently hard coded in the isenkram package
are down to zero, so only information provided by individual packages
are used for this feature.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As part of the work on AppStream, I have sponsored several packages
into Debian where the maintainer wanted to fix the issue but lacked
direct upload rights.  I&#39;ve also sponsored a few other packages, when
approached by the maintainer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I would also like to mention two hardware related packages in
particular where I have been involved, the megactl and mfi-util
packages.  Both work with the hardware RAID systems in several Dell
PowerEdge servers, and the first one is already available in Debian
(and of course, proposed by isenkram when used on the appropriate Dell
server), the other is waiting for NEW processing since this autumn.  I
manage several such Dell servers and would like the tools needed to
monitor and configure these RAID controllers to be available from
within Debian out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Vaguely related to hardware support in Debian, I have also been
trying to find ways to help out the Debian ROCm team, to improve the
support in Debian for my artificial idiocy (AI) compute node.  So far
only uploaded one package, helped test the initial packaging of
llama.cpp and tried to figure out how to get good speech recognition
like Whisper into Debian.&lt;p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am still involved in the LinuxCNC project, and organised a
developer gathering in Norway last summer.  A new one is planned the
summer of 2025.  I&#39;ve also helped evaluate patches and uploaded new
versions of LinuxCNC into Debian.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After a 10 years long break, we managed to get a new and improved
upstream version of &lt;tt&gt;lsdvd&lt;/tt&gt; released just before Christmas.  As
I use it regularly to maintain my DVD archive, I was very happy to
finally get out a version supporting DVDDiscID useful for uniquely
identifying DVDs.  I am dreaming of a Internet service mapping DVD IDs
to IMDB movie IDs, to make life as a DVD collector easier.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My involvement in Norwegian archive standardisation and the free
software implementation of the vendor neutral Noark 5 API continued
for the entire year.  I&#39;ve been pushing patches into both the API and
the test code for the API, participated in several editorial meetings
regarding the Noark 5 Tjenestegrensesnitt specification, submitted
several proposals for improvements for the same.  We also organised a
small seminar for Noark 5 interested people, and is organising a new
seminar in a month.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Part of the year was spent working on and coordinating a Norwegian
Bokmål translation of the marvellous children&#39;s book
«&lt;a href=&quot;https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/&quot;&gt;Ada and
Zangemann&lt;a&gt;», which focus on the right to repair and control your own
property, and the value of controlling the software on the devices you
own.  The translation is mostly complete, and is now waiting for a
transformation of the project and manuscript to use Docbook XML
instead of a home made semi-text based format.  Great progress is
being made and the new book build process is almost complete.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have also been looking at how to companies in Norway can use free
software to report their accounting summaries to the Norwegian
government.  Several new regulations make it very hard for companies
to do use free software for accounting, and I would like to change
this.  Found a few drafts for opening up the reporting process, and
have read up on some of the specifications, but nothing much is
working yet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These were just the top of the iceberg, but I guess this blog post
is long enough now. If you would like to help with any of these
projects, please get in touch, either directly on the project mailing
lists and forums, or with me via email, IRC or Signal. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 
&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>121 packages in Debian mapped to hardware for automatic recommendation</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/121_packages_in_Debian_mapped_to_hardware_for_automatic_recommendation.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 19 Jan 2025 12:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have been working on a automatic hardware
based package recommendation system for Debian and other Linux
distributions.  The isenkram system I started on back in 2013 now
consist of two subsystems, one locating firmware files using the
information provided by apt-file, and one matching hardware to
packages using information provided by AppStream.  The former is very
similar to the mechanism implemented in debian-installer to pick the
right firmware packages to install. This post is about the latter
system.  Thanks to steady progress and good help from both other
Debian and upstream developers, I am happy to report that
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;the Isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; now are able to recommend 121 packages using information
provided via
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Distributions/AppStream/&quot;&gt;AppStream&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The mapping is done using modalias information provided by the
kernel, the same information used by udev when creating device files,
and the kernel when deciding which kernel modules to load.  To get all
the modalias identifiers relevant for your machine, you can run the
following command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
find /sys/devices -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 sort -u
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The modalias identifiers can look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
acpi:PNP0000
cpu:type:x86,ven0000fam0006mod003F:feature:,0000,0001,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,0007,0008,0009,000B,000C,000D,000E,000F,0010,0011,0013,0015,0016,0017,0018,0019,001A,001B,001C,001D,001F,002B,0034,003A,003B,003D,0068,006B,006C,006D,006F,0070,0072,0074,0075,0076,0078,0079,007C,0080,0081,0082,0083,0084,0085,0086,0087,0088,0089,008B,008C,008D,008E,008F,0091,0092,0093,0094,0095,0096,0097,0098,0099,009A,009B,009C,009D,009E,00C0,00C5,00E1,00E3,00EB,00ED,00F0,00F1,00F3,00F5,00F6,00F9,00FA,00FB,00FD,00FF,0100,0101,0102,0103,0111,0120,0121,0123,0125,0127,0128,0129,012A,012C,012D,0140,0160,0161,0165,016C,017B,01C0,01C1,01C2,01C4,01C5,01C6,01F9,024A,025A,025B,025C,025F,0282
dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr2.18.1:bd08/14/2023:br2.18:svnDellInc.:pnPowerEdgeR730:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0H21J3:rvrA09:cvnDellInc.:ct23:cvr:skuSKU=NotProvided
pci:v00008086d00008D3Bsv00001028sd00000600bc07sc80i00
platform:serial8250
scsi:t-0x05
usb:v413CpA001d0000dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00in00
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The entries above are a selection of the complete set available on
a Dell PowerEdge R730 machine I have access to, to give an idea about
the various styles of hardware identifiers presented in the modalias
format.  When looking up relevant packages in a Debian Testing
installation on the same R730, I get this list of packages
proposed:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
% sudo isenkram-lookup
firmware-bnx2x
firmware-nvidia-graphics
firmware-qlogic
megactl
wsl
%
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The list consist of firmware packages requested by kernel modules,
as well packages with program to get the status from the RAID
controller and to maintain the LAN console.  When the edac-utils
package providing tools to check the ECC RAM status will enter testing
in a few days, it will also show up as a proposal from isenkram.  In
addition, once the mfiutil package we uploaded in October get past the
NEW processing, it will also propose a tool to configure the RAID
controller.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another example is the trusty old Lenovo Thinkpad X230, which have
hardware handled by several packages in the archive.  This is running
on Debian Stable:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
% isenkram-lookup 
beignet-opencl-icd
bluez
cheese
ethtool
firmware-iwlwifi
firmware-misc-nonfree
fprintd
fprintd-demo
gkrellm-thinkbat
hdapsd
libpam-fprintd
pidgin-blinklight
thinkfan
tlp
tp-smapi-dkms
tpb
%
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here there proposal consist of software to handle the camera,
bluetooth, network card, wifi card, GPU, fan, fingerprint reader and
acceleration sensor on the machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is the complete set of packages currently providing hardware
mapping via AppStream in Debian Unstable: air-quality-sensor,
alsa-firmware-loaders, antpm, array-info, avarice, avrdude,
bmusb-v4l2proxy, brltty, calibre, colorhug-client, concordance-common,
consolekit, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux, edac-utils,
eegdev-plugins-free, ekeyd, elogind, firmware-amd-graphics,
firmware-ath9k-htc, firmware-atheros, firmware-b43-installer,
firmware-b43legacy-installer, firmware-bnx2, firmware-bnx2x,
firmware-brcm80211, firmware-carl9170, firmware-cavium,
firmware-intel-graphics, firmware-intel-misc, firmware-ipw2x00,
firmware-ivtv, firmware-iwlwifi, firmware-libertas,
firmware-linux-free, firmware-mediatek, firmware-misc-nonfree,
firmware-myricom, firmware-netronome, firmware-netxen,
firmware-nvidia-graphics, firmware-qcom-soc, firmware-qlogic,
firmware-realtek, firmware-ti-connectivity, fpga-icestorm, g810-led,
galileo, garmin-forerunner-tools, gkrellm-thinkbat, goldencheetah,
gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, i8kutils, imsprog, ledger-wallets-udev,
libairspy0, libam7xxx0.1, libbladerf2, libgphoto2-6t64,
libhamlib-utils, libm2k0.9.0, libmirisdr4, libnxt, libopenxr1-monado,
libosmosdr0, librem5-flash-image, librtlsdr0, libticables2-8,
libx52pro0, libykpers-1-1, libyubikey-udev, limesuite,
linuxcnc-uspace, lomoco, madwimax, media-player-info, megactl, mixxx,
mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mu-editor, mustang-plug, nbc, nitrokey-app, nqc,
ola, openfpgaloader, openocd, openrazer-driver-dkms, pcmciautils,
pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, ponyprog, printer-driver-splix,
python-yubico-tools, python3-btchip, qlcplus, rosegarden, scdaemon,
sispmctl, solaar, spectools, sunxi-tools, t2n, thinkfan, tlp,
tp-smapi-dkms, trezor, tucnak, ubertooth, usbrelay, uuu, viking,
w1retap, wsl, xawtv, xinput-calibrator, xserver-xorg-input-wacom and
xtrx-dkms.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In addition to these, there are several
&lt;a href=&quot;https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=pere%40hungry.com&amp;tag=appstream-modalias&quot;&gt;with
patches pending in the Debian bug tracking system&lt;/a&gt;, and even more
where no-one wrote patches yet.  Good candiates for the latter are
packages
&lt;a href=&quot;https://udd.debian.org/lintian-tag.cgi?tag=appstream-metadata-missing-modalias-provide&quot;&gt;with
udev rules but no AppStream hardware information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The isenkram system consist of two packages, isenkram-cli with the
command line tools, and isenkram with a GUI background process.  The
latter will listen for dbus events from udev emitted when new hardware
become available (like when inserting a USB dongle or discovering a
new bluetooth device), look up the modalias entry for this piece of
hardware in AppStream (and a hard coded list of mappings from isenkram
- currently working hard to move this list to AppStream), and pop up a
dialog proposing to install any not already installed packages
supporting this hardware.  It work very well today when inserting the
LEGO Mindstorms RCX, NXT and EV3 controllers. :) If you want to make
sure more hardware related packages get recommended, please help out
fixing the remaining packages in Debian to provide AppStream metadata
with hardware mappings.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2025?</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2025_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 18 Jan 2025 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html&quot;&gt;Seven&lt;/a&gt;
and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html&quot;&gt;twelve&lt;/a&gt;
years ago, I measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian
was&lt;/a&gt;, first by analysing the desktop files in all packages in the
archive, then by analysing the DEP-11 AppStream data set.  I guess it
is time to repeat the measurement, only for unstable as last time:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  count MIME type
  ----- -----------------------
     63 image/png
     63 image/jpeg
     57 image/tiff
     54 image/gif
     51 image/bmp
     50 audio/mpeg
     48 text/plain
     42 audio/x-mp3
     40 application/ogg
     39 audio/x-wav
     39 audio/x-flac
     36 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
     35 audio/x-mpeg
     34 audio/x-mpegurl
     34 audio/ogg
     33 application/x-ogg
     32 audio/mp4
     31 audio/x-scpls
     31 application/pdf
     29 audio/x-ms-wma
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The list was created like this using a sid chroot:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
cat /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz | \
  zcat | awk &#39;/^  - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }&#39; | sort | \
  uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is nice to see that the same number of packages now support PNG
and JPEG.  Last time JPEG had more support than PNG.  Most of the MIME
types are known to me, but the &#39;audio/x-scpls&#39; one I have no idea what
represent, except it being an audio format.  To find the packages
claiming support for this format, the appstreamcli command from the
appstream package can be used:

&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides mediatype audio/x-scpls | grep Package: | sort -u
Package: alsaplayer-common
Package: amarok
Package: audacious
Package: brasero
Package: celluloid
Package: clapper
Package: clementine
Package: cynthiune.app
Package: elisa
Package: gtranscribe
Package: kaffeine
Package: kmplayer
Package: kylin-burner
Package: lollypop
Package: mediaconch-gui
Package: mediainfo-gui
Package: mplayer-gui
Package: mpv
Package: mystiq
Package: parlatype
Package: parole
Package: pragha
Package: qmmp
Package: rhythmbox
Package: sayonara
Package: shotcut
Package: smplayer
Package: soundconverter
Package: strawberry
Package: syncplay
Package: vlc
%
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Look like several video and auto tools understand the format.
Similarly one can check out the number of packages supporting the STL
format commonly used for 3D printing:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides mediatype model/stl | grep Package: | sort -u
Package: cura
Package: freecad
Package: open3d-viewer
%
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;How strange the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r&quot;&gt;slic3r&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa&quot;&gt;prusa-slicer&lt;/a&gt;
packages do not support STL.  Perhaps just missing package metadata?
Luckily the amount of package metadata in Debian is getting better,
and hopefully this way of locating relevant packages for any file
format will be the preferred one soon.

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>RAID status from LSI Megaraid controllers in Debian</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/RAID_status_from_LSI_Megaraid_controllers_in_Debian.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/RAID_status_from_LSI_Megaraid_controllers_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/namiltd/megactl&quot;&gt;the megactl package&lt;/a&gt;,
useful to fetch RAID status when using the LSI Megaraid controller,
now is available in Debian.  It passed NEW a few days ago, and is now
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/megactl&quot;&gt;available in
unstable&lt;/a&gt;, and probably showing up in testing in a weeks time.  The
new version should provide Appstream hardware mapping and should
integrate nicely with isenkram.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>RAID status from LSI Megaraid controllers using free software</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/RAID_status_from_LSI_Megaraid_controllers_using_free_software.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/RAID_status_from_LSI_Megaraid_controllers_using_free_software.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 3 Mar 2024 22:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have revisited RAID setup using the LSI
Megaraid controller.  These are a family of controllers called PERC by
Dell, and is present in several old PowerEdge servers, and I recently
got my hands on one of these.  I had forgotten how to handle this RAID
controller in Debian, so I had to take a peek in the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/LinuxRaidForAdmins&quot;&gt;Debian wiki page
&quot;Linux and Hardware RAID: an administrator&#39;s summary&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to remember
what kind of software is available to configure and monitor the disks
and controller.  I prefer Free Software alternatives to proprietary
tools, as the later tend to fall into disarray once the manufacturer
loose interest, and often do not work with newer Linux Distributions.
Sadly there is no free software tool to configure the RAID setup, only
to monitor it. RAID can provide improved reliability and resilience in
a storage solution, but only if it is being regularly checked and any
broken disks are being replaced in time.  I thus want to ensure some
automatic monitoring is available.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the discovery process, I came across a old free software tool to
monitor PERC2, PERC3, PERC4 and PERC5 controllers, which to my
surprise is not present in debian.  To help change that I created a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/1065322&quot;&gt;request for packaging of the
megactl package&lt;/a&gt;, and tried to track down a usable version.
&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/p/megactl/&quot;&gt;The original project
site&lt;/a&gt; is on Sourceforge, but as far as I can tell that project has
been dead for more than 15 years.  I managed to find a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hmage/megactl&quot;&gt;more recent fork on
github&lt;/a&gt; from user hmage, but it is unclear to me if this is still
being maintained.  It has not seen much improvements since 2016.  A
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/namiltd/megactl&quot;&gt;more up to date
edition&lt;/a&gt; is a git fork from the original github fork by user
namiltd, and this newer fork seem a lot more promising.  The owner of
this github repository has replied to change proposals within hours,
and had already added some improvements and support for more hardware.
Sadly he is reluctant to commit to maintaining the tool and stated in
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/namiltd/megactl/pull/1&quot;&gt;my first pull
request&lt;/A&gt; that he think a new release should be made based on the
git repository owned by hmage.  I perfectly understand this
reluctance, as I feel the same about maintaining yet another package
in Debian when I barely have time to take care of the ones I already
maintain, but do not really have high hopes that hmage will have time
to spend on it and hope namiltd will change his mind.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In any case, I created
&lt;a href=&quot;https://salsa.debian.org/debian/megactl&quot;&gt;a draft package&lt;/a&gt;
based on the namiltd edition and put it under the debian group on
salsa.debian.org.  If you own a Dell PowerEdge server with one of the
PERC controllers, or any other RAID controller using the megaraid or
megaraid_sas Linux kernel modules, you might want to check it out.  If
enough people are interested, perhaps the package will make it into
the Debian archive.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are two tools provided, megactl for the megaraid Linux kernel
module, and megasasctl for the megaraid_sas Linux kernel module. The
simple output from the command on one of my machines look like this
(yes, I know some of the disks have problems. :).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
# megasasctl 
a0       PERC H730 Mini           encl:1 ldrv:2  batt:good
a0d0       558GiB RAID 1   1x2  optimal
a0d1      3067GiB RAID 0   1x11 optimal
a0e32s0     558GiB  a0d0  online   errs: media:0  other:19
a0e32s1     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s2     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s3     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s4     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s5     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s6     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s8     558GiB  a0d0  online   errs: media:0  other:17
a0e32s9     279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s10    279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s11    279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s12    279GiB  a0d1  online  
a0e32s13    279GiB  a0d1  online  

#
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In addition to displaying a simple status report, it can also test
individual drives and print the various event logs.  Perhaps you too
find it useful?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the packaging process I provided some patches upstream to
improve installation and ensure
&lt;ahref=&quot;https://github.com/namiltd/megactl/pull/2&quot;&gt;a Appstream
metainfo file is provided&lt;/a&gt; to list all supported HW, to allow
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;isenkram&lt;/a&gt; to propose
the package on all servers with a relevant PCI card.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2018 08:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Five years ago,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html&quot;&gt;I
measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was&lt;/a&gt;, by
analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
unstable only this time:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  count MIME type
  ----- -----------------------
     56 image/jpeg
     55 image/png
     49 image/tiff
     48 image/gif
     39 image/bmp
     38 text/plain
     37 audio/mpeg
     34 application/ogg
     33 audio/x-flac
     32 audio/x-mp3
     30 audio/x-wav
     30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
     29 image/x-portable-pixmap
     27 inode/directory
     27 image/x-portable-bitmap
     27 audio/x-mpeg
     26 application/x-ogg
     25 audio/x-mpegurl
     25 audio/ogg
     24 text/html
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The list was created like this using a sid chroot: &quot;cat
/var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk &#39;/^
- \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }&#39; | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20&quot;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
MIME type of the file using &quot;file --mime &amp;lt;filename&amp;gt;&quot;, and then
look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using &quot;appstreamcli
what-provides mimetype &amp;lt;mime-type&amp;gt;.  For example if you, like
me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
list like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
Package: anjuta
Package: audacious
Package: baobab
Package: cervisia
Package: chirp
Package: dolphin
Package: doublecmd-common
Package: easytag
Package: enlightenment
Package: ephoto
Package: filelight
Package: gwenview
Package: k4dirstat
Package: kaffeine
Package: kdesvn
Package: kid3
Package: kid3-qt
Package: nautilus
Package: nemo
Package: pcmanfm
Package: pcmanfm-qt
Package: qweborf
Package: ranger
Package: sirikali
Package: spacefm
Package: spacefm
Package: vifm
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
Could not find component providing &#39;mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp&#39;.
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
format:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
Package: cura
Package: meshlab
Package: printrun
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 23 Dec 2016 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
readers probably know, I have been working on the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the Isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
metadata format.  And today,
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream&quot;&gt;AppStream&lt;/a&gt; in
Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
ie using fnmatch():&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
  usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
Identifier: pymissile [generic]
Name: pymissile
Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
Package: pymissile
% appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
Identifier: libnxt [generic]
Name: libnxt
Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
Package: libnxt
---
Identifier: t2n [generic]
Name: t2n
Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
Package: t2n
---
Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
Name: python-nxt
Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
Package: python-nxt
---
Identifier: nbc [generic]
Name: nbc
Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
Package: nbc
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
pymissile
% isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
libnxt
nbc
python-nxt
t2n
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
&lt;tt&gt;cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)&lt;/tt&gt;.

&lt;p&gt;If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
make the most of the hardware they have, please help
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;add AppStream
metadata for your package following the guidelines&lt;/a&gt; documented in
the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such information, among the
several hundred hardware specific packages in Debian. The Isenkram
database on the other hand contain 101 packages, mostly related to USB
dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware mapping in AppStream are
LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as part of my involvement in
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;the Debian LEGO
team&lt;/a&gt; given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware&quot;&gt;nxt-firmware
package&lt;/a&gt; made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
binaries for the NXT brick.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 20 Dec 2016 11:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;The Isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% isenkram-lookup  
bluez
cheese
ethtool
fprintd
fprintd-demo
gkrellm-thinkbat
hdapsd
libpam-fprintd
pidgin-blinklight
thinkfan
tlp
tp-smapi-dkms
tp-smapi-source
tpb
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
I have all the firmware my machine need:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
%
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
&lt;strong&gt;marked packages&lt;/strong&gt; are also announcing their hardware
support using AppStream, for everyone to use:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
&lt;strong&gt;array-info&lt;/strong&gt;, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, &lt;strong&gt;brltty&lt;/strong&gt;,
&lt;strong&gt;broadcom-sta-dkms&lt;/strong&gt;, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
&lt;strong&gt;colorhug-client&lt;/strong&gt;, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
fprintd-demo, &lt;strong&gt;galileo&lt;/strong&gt;, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
&lt;strong&gt;libnxt&lt;/strong&gt;, libpam-fprintd, &lt;strong&gt;lomoco&lt;/strong&gt;,
madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
&lt;strong&gt;nbc&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;nqc&lt;/strong&gt;, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
&lt;strong&gt;pymissile&lt;/strong&gt;, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
&lt;strong&gt;t2n&lt;/strong&gt;, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
zd1211-firmware&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
maintainer to
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;add AppStream
metadata according to the guidelines&lt;/a&gt; to provide the information
for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
card.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/838735&quot;&gt;bug #838735&lt;/a&gt; for
the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2016 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;The Isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
tool &lt;tt&gt;isenkram-lookup&lt;/tt&gt; and the tasksel options provide a
convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
reader, the system will ask if you want to install &lt;tt&gt;pcscd&lt;/tt&gt; if
that package isn&#39;t already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
camera the system will ask if you want to install &lt;tt&gt;cheese&lt;/tt&gt; if
cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
identifiers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
distribution neutral way.  I wrote
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;a
recipe on how to add such meta-information&lt;/a&gt; in a blog post last
December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
start programming his robot controller right away without having to
guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
ConsoleKit mechanism from &lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules&lt;/tt&gt;
no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The new system uses a udev tag, &#39;uaccess&#39;.  It can either be
applied directly for a device, or is applied in
/lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
&lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules&lt;/tt&gt; file now look like this:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
SUBSYSTEM==&quot;usb&quot;, ACTION==&quot;add&quot;, ATTR{idVendor}==&quot;0694&quot;, ATTR{idProduct}==&quot;0001&quot;, \
    SYMLINK+=&quot;rcx-%k&quot;, TAG+=&quot;uaccess&quot;
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The key part is the &#39;TAG+=&quot;uaccess&quot;&#39; at the end.  I suspect all
packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
&lt;tt&gt;70-uaccess.rules&lt;/tt&gt;).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
to detect this?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
detail like the udev-acl tag used by
&lt;tt&gt;/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules&lt;/tt&gt;.  If it is, I guess the
indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288&quot;&gt;asked for more
documentation from the systemd project&lt;/a&gt; and I hope it will make
this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
is already handled by &lt;tt&gt;70-uaccess.rules&lt;/tt&gt;, and add the tag
directly if no such class exist.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
please join us on our IRC channel
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; and join
the &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/&quot;&gt;Debian
LEGO team&lt;/a&gt; in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2016 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram&quot;&gt;The isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
is going away and is generally being replaced by
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt;,
so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
rewrite finally took place.  I&#39;ve just uploaded a new version of
Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
install the &lt;tt&gt;isenkram&lt;/tt&gt; package and insert some hardware dongle
and see if it is recognised.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
% isenkram-lookup 
bluez
cheese
fprintd
fprintd-demo
gkrellm-thinkbat
hdapsd
libpam-fprintd
pidgin-blinklight
thinkfan
tleds
tp-smapi-dkms
tp-smapi-source
tpb
%p
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
is for packages to announce their hardware support using
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
cross distribution appstream system&lt;/a&gt;.
See
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;previous
blog posts about isenkram&lt;/a&gt; to learn how to do that.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Around three years ago, I created
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;the isenkram
system&lt;/a&gt; to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
with.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/&quot;&gt;the
appstream system&lt;/a&gt; was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
Debian version of appstream.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
how do add the required
&lt;a href=&quot;https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html&quot;&gt;metadata
in pymissile&lt;/a&gt;.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
this content:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
&amp;lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&amp;gt;
&amp;lt;component&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;id&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/id&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;metadata_license&amp;gt;MIT&amp;lt;/metadata_license&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;name&amp;gt;pymissile&amp;lt;/name&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;summary&amp;gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&amp;lt;/summary&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;description&amp;gt;
    &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;
      Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
      Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
      motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
      launcher.
    &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;/description&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;provides&amp;gt;
    &amp;lt;modalias&amp;gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&amp;lt;/modalias&amp;gt;
  &amp;lt;/provides&amp;gt;
&amp;lt;/component&amp;gt;
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
(modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
0202.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
(in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
upstream for this project is dormant.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
line to debian/pymissile.install:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
question.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the 
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt; proposal.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
try running this command on the command line:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;my
blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
&lt;a href=&quot;https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html&quot;&gt;my isenkram
package&lt;/a&gt; and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
to do this using simple preseeding.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
of this story.)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
hardware it is the only option in Debian.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
firmware installed automatically by the installer:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
implemented in the package currently in unstable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
this recipe work for you. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
Task: isenkram-packages
Section: hardware
Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 proposed.
Test-new-install: show show
Relevance: 8
Packages: for-current-hardware

Task: isenkram-firmware
Section: hardware
Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 packages are proposed.
Test-new-install: mark show
Relevance: 8
Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
#!/bin/sh
#
PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
export PATH
isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
installed, run &lt;tt&gt;DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
--new-install&lt;/tt&gt; to get the list of packages that tasksel would
install.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; will be
pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
So I implemented one, using
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;my Isenkram
package&lt;/a&gt;.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
&quot;Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)&quot;.  When you
select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.&lt;p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
packages to install.  The first part is in
&lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
Task: isenkram
Section: hardware
Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 proposed.
Test-new-install: mark show
Relevance: 8
Packages: for-current-hardware
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The second part is in
&lt;tt&gt;/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware&lt;/tt&gt; and look like
this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
#!/bin/sh
#
(
    isenkram-lookup
    isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
) | sort -u
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
have installed on our machines.  I&#39;ve not been able to find a way to
get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
/usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/719837&quot;&gt;#719837&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/730704&quot;&gt;#730704&lt;/a&gt;).  The cause is in
the python-apt code (bug
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/745487&quot;&gt;#745487&lt;/a&gt;), but using a
workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
unstable today.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;DEP-11&lt;/a&gt;, and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive&quot;&gt;GSoC
project&lt;/a&gt; will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
start using the information when it is ready.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
add a &quot;Xb-Modaliases&quot; header to your control file like I did in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;the pymissile
package&lt;/a&gt; or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
package.  See also
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/tags/isenkram/&quot;&gt;all my
blog posts tagged isenkram&lt;/a&gt; for details on the notation.  I expect
the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
moment I got no better place to store it.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
firmware-ipw2x00
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
# 
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
&lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
#655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
pluggable hardware devices, which I
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
word.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
process.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
it, fetch the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
initially did.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
the APT database, a database
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
storing such information in the package control file, but could be
changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
&#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
modalias.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
Package: package-name
&lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
Package: cheese
&lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
Package: pcmciautils
&lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
Package: colorhug-client
&lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
Raring.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
try the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
% ./hw-support-lookup
&lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
&lt;br&gt;%
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
% ./hw-support-lookup 
&lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
&lt;br&gt;%
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
/lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
&amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
&amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
&amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
&amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.

&lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
% /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
%
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
 v   00008086  (vendor)
 d   00002770  (device)
 sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 bc  06        (bus class)
 sc  00        (bus subclass)
 i   00        (interface)
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
-n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
means.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
 v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 p    0001  (device product)
 d    0206  (bcddevice)
 dc     09  (device class)
 dsc    00  (device subclass)
 dp     00  (device protocol)
 ic     09  (interface class)
 isc    00  (interface subclass)
 ip     00  (interface protocol)
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
&lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
&lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
&lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
/sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
 bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 ct   10             (chassis type)
 cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  3 Desktop
  4 Low Profile Desktop
  5 Pizza Box
  6 Mini Tower
  7 Tower
  8 Portable
  9 Laptop
 10 Notebook
 11 Hand Held
 12 Docking Station
 13 All In One
 14 Sub Notebook
 15 Space-saving
 16 Lunch Box
 17 Main Server Chassis
 18 Expansion Chassis
 19 Sub Chassis
 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 21 Peripheral Chassis
 22 RAID Chassis
 23 Rack Mount Chassis
 24 Sealed-case PC
 25 Multi-system
 26 CompactPCI
 27 AdvancedTCA
 28 Blade
 29 Blade Enclosing
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
test machine:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  ty  01  (type)
  pr  00  (prototype)
  id  00  (id)
  ex  00  (extra)
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
    echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
    /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
  done
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;pre&gt;
  acpi:ACPI0003:
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko 
  acpi:device:
  FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
  acpi:IBM0068:
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko 
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko 
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko 
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko 
  acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko 
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko 
    insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko 
  [...]
&lt;/pre&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
&quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
Launcher and updated the Debian package
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
                <link>http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
general, is that there is a great package management system with the
ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
simple:

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
  starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
  hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
  database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
  packages.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
  package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
discover database to find packages and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
packages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
draft package is now checked into
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current 
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
/proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
inserted):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
list the package you would like to have installed when a given
hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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