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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          8th October 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
  32 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
  33 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
  34 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
  35 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
  36 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
  37 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
  38 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
  39 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
  40 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
  41 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aron is dead.  Let us all
  42 weep.</p>
  43
  44 <p>The movie is available on
  45 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
  46 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
  47 my parents.</p>
  48
  49       </div>
  50       <div class="tags">
  51
  52
  53         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
  54
  55
  56       </div>
  57     </div>
  58     <div class="padding"></div>
  59
  60     <div class="entry">
  61       <div class="title">
  62         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
  63       </div>
  64       <div class="date">
  65          1st October 2015
  66       </div>
  67       <div class="body">
  68         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
  69 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
  70 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
  71 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
  72 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
  73 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
  74 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
  75 French translation available from the
  76 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
  77 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
  78 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
  79 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
  80 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
  81 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
  82 edition, check out
  83 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
  84 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
  85 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
  86 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
  87
  88       </div>
  89       <div class="tags">
  90
  91
  92         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
  93
  94
  95       </div>
  96     </div>
  97     <div class="padding"></div>
  98
  99     <div class="entry">
 100       <div class="title">
 101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 102       </div>
 103       <div class="date">
 104         24th September 2015
 105       </div>
 106       <div class="body">
 107         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 108 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 109 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 110 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 111 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 112 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 113 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 114
 115 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 116
 117 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 118 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 119 by someone else.  I found
 120 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 121 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 122 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 123 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 124 from him.  Via
 125 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 126 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 127 discovered
 128 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 129 available in Debian.</p>
 130
 131 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 132 battery stats ever since. Now my
 133 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 134 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 135 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 136 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 137
 138 <pre>
 139 #!/bin/sh
 140 # Inspired by
 141 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 142 # See also
 143 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 144 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 145
 146 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 147     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 148
 149 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 150     (
 151         printf "timestamp,"
 152         for f in $files; do
 153             printf "%s," $f
 154         done
 155         echo
 156     ) > "$logfile"
 157 fi
 158
 159 log_battery() {
 160     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 161     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 162     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 163         for f in $files; do \
 164             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 165         done)
 166     echo "$msg"
 167 }
 168
 169 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 170
 171 for bat in BAT*; do
 172     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 173 done
 174 </pre>
 175
 176 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 177 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 178 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 179 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 180 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 181 The code for the Debian package
 182 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 183 available on github</a>.</p>
 184
 185 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 186
 187 <pre>
 188 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 189 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 190 [...]
 191 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 192 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 193 </pre>
 194
 195 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 196 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 197 battery.</p>
 198
 199 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 200 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 201 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 202 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 203 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 204 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 205 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 206 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 207 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 208 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 209 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 210 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 211 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 212 Linux too.</p>
 213
 214 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 215 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 216 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 217 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 218 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 219 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 220 load).</p>
 221
 222 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 223 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 224 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 225 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 226 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 227 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 228 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 229 those.</p>
 230
 231 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 232 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 233 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 234 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 235 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 236 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 237 specific.</p>
 238
 239       </div>
 240       <div class="tags">
 241
 242
 243         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 244
 245
 246       </div>
 247     </div>
 248     <div class="padding"></div>
 249
 250     <div class="entry">
 251       <div class="title">
 252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 253       </div>
 254       <div class="date">
 255          3rd September 2015
 256       </div>
 257       <div class="body">
 258         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 259 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 260 the
 261 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 262 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 263 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 264 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 265
 266 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 267 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 268 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 269 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 270 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 271 version.  Not only did he create a
 272 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 273 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 274 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 275 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 276 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 277 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 278 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 279 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 280 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 281 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 282
 283 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 284 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 285 current english version look like this:</p>
 286
 287 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 288
 289 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 290 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 291 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 292 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 293 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 294
 295 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 296 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 297 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 298 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 299 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 300 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 301
 302       </div>
 303       <div class="tags">
 304
 305
 306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 307
 308
 309       </div>
 310     </div>
 311     <div class="padding"></div>
 312
 313     <div class="entry">
 314       <div class="title">
 315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 316       </div>
 317       <div class="date">
 318         19th August 2015
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="body">
 321         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 322 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 323 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 324 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 325 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 326 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 327 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 328 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 329 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 330 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 331 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 332 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 333 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 334 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 335 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 336 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 337 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 338
 339 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 340 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 341 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 342 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 343 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 344 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 345
 346       </div>
 347       <div class="tags">
 348
 349
 350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 351
 352
 353       </div>
 354     </div>
 355     <div class="padding"></div>
 356
 357     <div class="entry">
 358       <div class="title">
 359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 360       </div>
 361       <div class="date">
 362          9th August 2015
 363       </div>
 364       <div class="body">
 365         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 366 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 367 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 368 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 369 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 370 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 371 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 372 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 373 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 374
 375 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 376 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 377 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 378 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 379 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 380
 381 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 382 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 383 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 384 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 385 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 386 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 387
 388 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 389 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 390 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 391 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 392 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 393 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 394 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 395 bring the prize down further.</p>
 396
 397 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 398 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 399 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 400 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 401 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 402 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 403 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 404 to the task.</p>
 405
 406 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 407 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 408 status can as usual be found on
 409 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 410 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 411 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 412 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 413 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 414 formatting.</p>
 415
 416 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 417 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 418 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 419 result in a few months.</p>
 420
 421       </div>
 422       <div class="tags">
 423
 424
 425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 426
 427
 428       </div>
 429     </div>
 430     <div class="padding"></div>
 431
 432     <div class="entry">
 433       <div class="title">
 434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 435       </div>
 436       <div class="date">
 437         16th July 2015
 438       </div>
 439       <div class="body">
 440         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 441 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 442 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 443 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 444 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 445 chapter.  Based on the
 446 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 447 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 448 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 449 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 450 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 451 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 452 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 453 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 454
 455 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 456 and add this text there:</p>
 457
 458 <pre>
 459 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 460 </pre>
 461
 462 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 463 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 464 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 465
 466 <pre>
 467 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 468 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 469   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 470     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 471 \usepackage{endnotes}
 472 \let\footnote=\endnote
 473 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 474 \begin{document}
 475     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 476   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 477 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 478 </pre>
 479
 480 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 481 this:</p>
 482
 483 <pre>
 484 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 485 </pre>
 486
 487 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 488 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 489 book project</a> is located.</p>
 490
 491       </div>
 492       <div class="tags">
 493
 494
 495         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
 496
 497
 498       </div>
 499     </div>
 500     <div class="padding"></div>
 501
 502     <div class="entry">
 503       <div class="title">
 504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 505       </div>
 506       <div class="date">
 507          7th July 2015
 508       </div>
 509       <div class="body">
 510         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 512 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 513 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 514 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 515 does not.</p>
 516
 517 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 518 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 519 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 520 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 521
 522 <p><blockquote>
 523
 524 <p>According to
 525 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 526 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 527 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 528 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 529 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 530 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 531
 532 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 533 PDF named
 534 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 535 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 536 fees:</p>
 537
 538 <ul>
 539  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 540   <ul>
 541    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 542      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 543      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 544      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 545
 546    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 547      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 548   </ul></li>
 549
 550  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 551   <ul>
 552    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 553      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 554      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 555
 556    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 557      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 558   </ul></li>
 559 </ul>
 560
 561 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 562 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 563 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 564 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 565 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 566 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 567
 568 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 569 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 570 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 571 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 572 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 573 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 574 access to personalized services?</p>
 575
 576 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 577 Internet.</p>
 578 </blockquote></p>
 579
 580 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 581 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 582
 583 <p><blockquote>
 584 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 585 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 586
 587 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 588 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 589 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 590 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 591 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 592 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 593 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 594
 595 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 596 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 597 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 598 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 599 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 600 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 601 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 602 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 603 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 604 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 605 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 606 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 607
 608 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 609 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 610 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 611 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 612 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 613 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 614 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 615
 616 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 617 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 618 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 619 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 620
 621 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 622 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 623 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 624 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 625 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 626 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 627 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 628 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 629 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 630 be used for execution.</p>
 631
 632 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 633 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 634 free to contact me directly.</p>
 635 </blockquote></p>
 636
 637 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 638 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 639 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 640 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 641
 642 <p><blockquote>
 643 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 644 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 645 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 646 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 647 typically look similar to this:
 648
 649 <p><blockquote>
 650   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 651   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 652   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 653   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 654   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 655   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 656   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 657   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 658 </blockquote></p>
 659
 660 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 661 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 662 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 663 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 664 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 665 </blockquote></p>
 666
 667 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 668 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 669
 670 <p><blockquote>
 671
 672 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 673 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 674 reads:</p>
 675
 676 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 677 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 678 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 679 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 680 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 681 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 682 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 683 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 684
 685 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 686 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 687 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 688 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 689 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 690 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 691 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 692 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 693
 694 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 695 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 696 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 697 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 698 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 699 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 700 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 701 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 702 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 703
 704 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 705 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 706 Norway.</p>
 707
 708 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 709 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 710 </blockquote></p>
 711
 712 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 713 asked for more information:</p>
 714
 715 <p><blockquote>
 716
 717 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 718 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 719 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 720 list available from &lt;URL:
 721 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 722 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 723 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 724 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 725 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 726
 727 </blockquote></p>
 728
 729 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 730 in that list:</p>
 731
 732 <p><blockquote>
 733
 734 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 735 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 736 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 737 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 738 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 739 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 740 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 741 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 742 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 743
 744 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 745 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 746 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 747 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 748 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 749 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 750 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 751 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 752 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 753 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 754 </blockquote></p>
 755
 756 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 757 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 758 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 759 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 760 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 761 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 762 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 763 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 764 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 765
 766       </div>
 767       <div class="tags">
 768
 769
 770         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 771
 772
 773       </div>
 774     </div>
 775     <div class="padding"></div>
 776
 777     <div class="entry">
 778       <div class="title">
 779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 780       </div>
 781       <div class="date">
 782          5th July 2015
 783       </div>
 784       <div class="body">
 785         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 786 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 787 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 788 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 789 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 790 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 791 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 792 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 793 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 794 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 795 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 796
 797 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 798 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 799 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 800 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 801 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 802 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 803 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 804
 805 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 806 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 807 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 808 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 809 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 810 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 811 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 812 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 813 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 814 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 815 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 816 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 817 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 818 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 819 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 820
 821 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 822 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 823 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 824 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 825
 826 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 827 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 828
 829 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 830 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 831 different
 832 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 833 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 834
 835       </div>
 836       <div class="tags">
 837
 838
 839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 840
 841
 842       </div>
 843     </div>
 844     <div class="padding"></div>
 845
 846     <div class="entry">
 847       <div class="title">
 848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 849       </div>
 850       <div class="date">
 851          3rd July 2015
 852       </div>
 853       <div class="body">
 854         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 855 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 856 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 857 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 858 flickering.</p>
 859
 860 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 861 still as
 862 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 863 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 864 good help from
 865 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 866 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 867 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 868 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 869 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 870 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 871 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 872 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 873 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 874
 875 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 876 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 877 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 878 have suggestions.</p>
 879
 880 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 881 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 882 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 883
 884       </div>
 885       <div class="tags">
 886
 887
 888         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 889
 890
 891       </div>
 892     </div>
 893     <div class="padding"></div>
 894
 895     <div class="entry">
 896       <div class="title">
 897         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
 898       </div>
 899       <div class="date">
 900          2nd July 2015
 901       </div>
 902       <div class="body">
 903         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
 904 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
 905 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
 906 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
 907 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
 908 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
 909 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
 910 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
 911 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
 912 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
 913 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
 914 Youtube too</a>.</p>
 915
 916 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
 917 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
 918 pages</a> to view them.</p>
 919
 920 <ul>
 921
 922   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
 923       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
 924
 925   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
 926
 927   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
 928       (Olav Helland)</li>
 929
 930   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
 931       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
 932
 933   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
 934
 935   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
 936
 937   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
 938       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
 939
 940   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
 941
 942   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
 943
 944   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
 945
 946   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
 947
 948   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
 949       Sevens)</li>
 950
 951   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
 952       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
 953
 954   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
 955       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
 956
 957   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
 958       Dyvik)</li>
 959
 960   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
 961
 962 </ul>
 963
 964 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
 965 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
 966 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
 967 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
 968 which sent me on a detour to
 969 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
 970 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
 971 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 972
 973       </div>
 974       <div class="tags">
 975
 976
 977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 978
 979
 980       </div>
 981     </div>
 982     <div class="padding"></div>
 983
 984     <div class="entry">
 985       <div class="title">
 986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 987       </div>
 988       <div class="date">
 989         15th June 2015
 990       </div>
 991       <div class="body">
 992         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 993 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 994 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 995 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 996 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 997 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 998 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 999 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
1000 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
1001
1002 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
1003 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
1004 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
1005 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
1006
1007 <pre>
1008 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
1009
1010 real    0m2.841s
1011 user    0m0.184s
1012 sys     0m0.036s
1013 %
1014 </pre>
1015
1016 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
1017 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
1018 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
1019 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
1020 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
1021
1022 <pre>
1023 digraph ownership {
1024 rankdir = LR;
1025 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
1026 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
1027 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
1028 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
1029 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
1030 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
1031 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
1032 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
1033 }
1034 </pre>
1035
1036 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
1037 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
1038 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
1039
1040 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
1041
1042 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
1043 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
1044 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
1045 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
1046 of the ownership links.</p>
1047
1048 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
1049 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
1050
1051 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
1052 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
1053 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
1054 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
1055 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
1056 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
1057 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
1058
1059       </div>
1060       <div class="tags">
1061
1062
1063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1064
1065
1066       </div>
1067     </div>
1068     <div class="padding"></div>
1069
1070     <div class="entry">
1071       <div class="title">
1072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
1073       </div>
1074       <div class="date">
1075         11th June 2015
1076       </div>
1077       <div class="body">
1078         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
1079 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
1080 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
1081 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
1082 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
1083 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1084 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1085 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1086 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1087 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1088 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1089 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1090 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1091
1092 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1093 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1094 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1095 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1096 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1097 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1098 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1099 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1100 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1101 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1102
1103 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1104 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1105 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1106 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1107 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1108 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1109 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1110 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1111 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1112
1113 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1114 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1115 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1116 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1117 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1118 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1119 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1120 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1121 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1122 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1123 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1124
1125       </div>
1126       <div class="tags">
1127
1128
1129         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1130
1131
1132       </div>
1133     </div>
1134     <div class="padding"></div>
1135
1136     <div class="entry">
1137       <div class="title">
1138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1139       </div>
1140       <div class="date">
1141         10th May 2015
1142       </div>
1143       <div class="body">
1144         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1145 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1146 criminal or not, are
1147 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1148 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1149 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1150 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1151 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1152 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1153 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1154 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1155 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1156 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1157 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1158 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1159 the police.</p>
1160
1161 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1162 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1163 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1164 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1165 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1166 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1167 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1168 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1169 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1170 is good to know that
1171 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1172 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1173 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1174 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1175 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1176 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1177 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1178 business getting access to that information.</p>
1179
1180 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1181 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1182 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1183 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1184 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1185 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1186 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1187
1188 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1189 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1190 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1191 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1192
1193 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1194 really could make such decision, I wrote
1195 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1196 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1197 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1198
1199       </div>
1200       <div class="tags">
1201
1202
1203         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1204
1205
1206       </div>
1207     </div>
1208     <div class="padding"></div>
1209
1210     <div class="entry">
1211       <div class="title">
1212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="date">
1215          1st May 2015
1216       </div>
1217       <div class="body">
1218         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1219 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1220 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1221 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1222 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1223 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1224 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1225
1226 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1227 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1228 the 2012 numbers are from
1229 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1230 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1231 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1232 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1233 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1234
1235 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1236 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1237 enough.  See for example a
1238 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1239 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1240 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1241 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1242
1243 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1244 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1245 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1246 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1247 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1248
1249 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1250 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1251 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1252 and large organisations:</p>
1253
1254 <table border="1">
1255 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1256 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1257 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1258 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1259 </table>
1260
1261 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1262 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1263 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1264 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1265 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1266 collecting the data?</p>
1267
1268       </div>
1269       <div class="tags">
1270
1271
1272         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1273
1274
1275       </div>
1276     </div>
1277     <div class="padding"></div>
1278
1279     <div class="entry">
1280       <div class="title">
1281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1282       </div>
1283       <div class="date">
1284         26th April 2015
1285       </div>
1286       <div class="body">
1287         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1288 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1289 announcement today</a>:</p>
1290
1291 <pre>
1292 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1293 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1294 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1295 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1296
1297 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1298 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1299 later today ;)
1300
1301 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1302 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1303 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1304 be possible and encouraged!
1305
1306 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1307 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1308
1309 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1310 operating system for schools, universities and other
1311 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1312 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1313 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1314 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1315 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1316 days.
1317
1318 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1319 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1320 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1321 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1322
1323 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1324 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1325 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1326 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1327 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1328 least 5 characters!
1329
1330 == Where to download ==
1331
1332 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1333 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1334
1335     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1336     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1337
1338 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1339
1340 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1341 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1342 time):
1343
1344     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1345     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1346
1347 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1348
1349 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1350 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1351 options.
1352
1353 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1354
1355 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1356 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1357
1358 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1359 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1360 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1361 online version of the translated manual.
1362
1363 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1364 release notes and the installation manual:
1365 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1366 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1367
1368
1369 == Errata / known problems ==
1370
1371     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1372     DHCP (#780461).
1373
1374     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1375
1376 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1377 hostname immediately.
1378
1379 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1380 more current and complete list.
1381
1382 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1383
1384 === Software updates ===
1385
1386 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1387
1388  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1389    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1390    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1391
1392  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1393    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1394    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1395    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1396      the others see the manual.
1397  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1398  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1399  * GOsa 2.7.4
1400  * LTSP 5.5.4
1401  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1402  * new boot framework: systemd
1403  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1404  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1405  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1406  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1407  * golearn 0.9
1408  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1409  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1410  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1411  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1412    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1413
1414 === Installation changes ===
1415
1416     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1417     for the hardware present.
1418
1419 === Fixed bugs ===
1420
1421 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1422 from a user perspective:
1423
1424  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1425    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1426    information is corrected (710362)
1427
1428  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1429
1430 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1431
1432 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1433 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1434
1435
1436 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1437
1438 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1439 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1440 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1441 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1442 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1443 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1444 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1445 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1446 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1447 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1448 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1449 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1450 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1451 environment.
1452
1453 == About Debian ==
1454
1455 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1456 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1457 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1458 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1459 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1460 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1461 operating system.
1462
1463 == Thanks ==
1464
1465 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1466 You rock.
1467 </pre>
1468
1469       </div>
1470       <div class="tags">
1471
1472
1473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1474
1475
1476       </div>
1477     </div>
1478     <div class="padding"></div>
1479
1480     <div class="entry">
1481       <div class="title">
1482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1483       </div>
1484       <div class="date">
1485         15th April 2015
1486       </div>
1487       <div class="body">
1488         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1489 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1490 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1491 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1492 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1493 Agarwal.</p>
1494
1495 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1496
1497 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1498 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1499 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1500 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1501 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1502 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1503
1504 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1505 project?</strong></p>
1506
1507 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1508 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1509 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1510 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1511 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1512 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1513 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1514
1515 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1516 Edu?</strong></p>
1517
1518 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1519 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1520 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1521 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1522 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1523 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1524 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1525 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1526
1527 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1528 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1529 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1530 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1531 for the developer per-se.</p>
1532
1533 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1534 Edu?</strong></p>
1535
1536 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1537 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1538 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1539
1540 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1541 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1542 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1543 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1544 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1545 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1546 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1547
1548 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1549 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1550 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1551
1552 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1553 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1554 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1555 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1556 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1557 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1558 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1559 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1560 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1561 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1562 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1563 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1564 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1565 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1566
1567 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1568 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1569 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1570 also be used.</p>
1571
1572 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1573 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1574 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1575 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1576 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1577 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1578 the user's input.</p>
1579
1580 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1581 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1582 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1583 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1584 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1585 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1586 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1587 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1588
1589 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1590 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1591 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1592 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1593 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1594 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1595 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1596 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1597
1598 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1599
1600 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1601 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1602 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1603 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1604 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1605
1606 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1607 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1608
1609 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1610 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1611 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1612 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1613 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1614 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1615
1616 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1617 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1618 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1619 well.</p>
1620
1621 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1622 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1623 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1624 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1625
1626 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1627 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1628 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1629 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1630 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1631 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1632 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1633 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1634 releases.</p>
1635
1636 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1637 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1638 is aimed at.
1639
1640 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1641 around 2 years, and
1642 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1643 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1644 there was :</p>
1645
1646 <ol>
1647
1648   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1649    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1650    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1651
1652   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1653    is in the syllabus.</li>
1654
1655   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1656    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1657    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1658    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1659    as recognizable as say a
1660    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1661    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1662    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1663    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1664    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1665    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1666
1667 </ol>
1668
1669       </div>
1670       <div class="tags">
1671
1672
1673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1674
1675
1676       </div>
1677     </div>
1678     <div class="padding"></div>
1679
1680     <div class="entry">
1681       <div class="title">
1682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1683       </div>
1684       <div class="date">
1685          7th April 2015
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="body">
1688         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1689 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1690 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1691
1692 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1693 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1694 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1695 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1696 part of my involvement with the
1697 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1698 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1699 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1700 Hackathon with our friends
1701 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1702 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1703 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1704 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1705
1706 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1707 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1708
1709       </div>
1710       <div class="tags">
1711
1712
1713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1714
1715
1716       </div>
1717     </div>
1718     <div class="padding"></div>
1719
1720     <div class="entry">
1721       <div class="title">
1722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1723       </div>
1724       <div class="date">
1725          4th April 2015
1726       </div>
1727       <div class="body">
1728         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1729 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1730 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1731 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1732 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1733 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1734 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1735 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1736 project pages.  You can also check out the
1737 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1738 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1739 and HTML version available in the
1740 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1741 directory</a>.</p>
1742
1743 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1744 you find any.</p>
1745
1746       </div>
1747       <div class="tags">
1748
1749
1750         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1751
1752
1753       </div>
1754     </div>
1755     <div class="padding"></div>
1756
1757     <div class="entry">
1758       <div class="title">
1759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1760       </div>
1761       <div class="date">
1762          9th March 2015
1763       </div>
1764       <div class="body">
1765         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1766 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1767 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1768 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1769 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1770 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1771 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1772 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1773 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1774 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1775 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1776 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1777 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1778 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1779
1780 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1781 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1782 include things like a
1783 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1784 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1785 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1786 re-implementation</a>, the
1787 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1788 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1789 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1790 video</A> and many others.</p>
1791
1792 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1793 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1794 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1795 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1796 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1797 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1798 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1799 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1800 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1801 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1802
1803 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1804 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1805 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1806 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1807 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1808 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1809 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1810 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1811 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1812 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1813
1814       </div>
1815       <div class="tags">
1816
1817
1818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1819
1820
1821       </div>
1822     </div>
1823     <div class="padding"></div>
1824
1825     <div class="entry">
1826       <div class="title">
1827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1828       </div>
1829       <div class="date">
1830         28th February 2015
1831       </div>
1832       <div class="body">
1833         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1834 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1835 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1836 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1837 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1838 made for
1839 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1840 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1841 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1842 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1843 a friend have
1844 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1845 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1846 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1847 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1848 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1849 it happen ourselves.
1850 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1851 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1852 is.</p>
1853
1854 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1855 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1856
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="tags">
1859
1860
1861         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1862
1863
1864       </div>
1865     </div>
1866     <div class="padding"></div>
1867
1868     <div class="entry">
1869       <div class="title">
1870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1871       </div>
1872       <div class="date">
1873         25th February 2015
1874       </div>
1875       <div class="body">
1876         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1877 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1878 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1879 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1880 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1881 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1882 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1883 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1884 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1885 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1886 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1887 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1888 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1889 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1890 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1891 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1892 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1893
1894 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1895 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1896 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1897 with VLC.</p>
1898
1899 <ul>
1900   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1901   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1902 </ul>
1903
1904 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1905 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1906 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1907 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1908 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1909 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1910 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1911
1912 <blockquote><pre>
1913 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1914  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1915  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1916 </pre></blockquote>
1917
1918 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1919 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1920 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1921 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1922
1923       </div>
1924       <div class="tags">
1925
1926
1927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1928
1929
1930       </div>
1931     </div>
1932     <div class="padding"></div>
1933
1934     <div class="entry">
1935       <div class="title">
1936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1937       </div>
1938       <div class="date">
1939         10th February 2015
1940       </div>
1941       <div class="body">
1942         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1943 that
1944 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1945 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1946 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1947 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1948 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1949 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1950 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1951 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1952 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1953 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1954 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1955 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1956 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1957 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1958 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1959
1960 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1961 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1962 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1963 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1964
1965 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1966 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1967 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1968
1969       </div>
1970       <div class="tags">
1971
1972
1973         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
1974
1975
1976       </div>
1977     </div>
1978     <div class="padding"></div>
1979
1980     <div class="entry">
1981       <div class="title">
1982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
1983       </div>
1984       <div class="date">
1985          8th February 2015
1986       </div>
1987       <div class="body">
1988         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1989 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1990 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1991 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1992 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1993 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1994 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1995 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1996 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1997 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1998 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1999 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
2000
2001 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
2002 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
2003 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
2004 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
2005
2006 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
2007 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
2008 distribute the TV content.  The
2009 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
2010 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
2011 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
2012 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
2013 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
2014 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
2015 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
2016 following activity, we now have the schedule
2017 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
2018 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
2019 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
2020 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
2021
2022 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
2023 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
2024 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
2025 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
2026 streams are working as they should.</p>
2027
2028       </div>
2029       <div class="tags">
2030
2031
2032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2033
2034
2035       </div>
2036     </div>
2037     <div class="padding"></div>
2038
2039     <div class="entry">
2040       <div class="title">
2041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
2042       </div>
2043       <div class="date">
2044         12th January 2015
2045       </div>
2046       <div class="body">
2047         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
2048 Foundation</a> announced a new video
2049 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
2050 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
2051 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
2052 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
2053 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
2054 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
2055
2056 <p>But today I was told that
2057 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
2058 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
2059 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
2060 available in
2061 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
2062 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
2063 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
2064
2065 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
2066 Libreplanet
2067 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
2068 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
2069
2070       </div>
2071       <div class="tags">
2072
2073
2074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2075
2076
2077       </div>
2078     </div>
2079     <div class="padding"></div>
2080
2081     <div class="entry">
2082       <div class="title">
2083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="date">
2086         30th December 2014
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="body">
2089         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2090 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2091 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2092 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2093 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2094 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2095 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2096 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2097 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2098 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2099 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2100
2101 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2102 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2103 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2104 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2105 reports in public.</p>
2106
2107       </div>
2108       <div class="tags">
2109
2110
2111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2112
2113
2114       </div>
2115     </div>
2116     <div class="padding"></div>
2117
2118     <div class="entry">
2119       <div class="title">
2120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
2121       </div>
2122       <div class="date">
2123         19th December 2014
2124       </div>
2125       <div class="body">
2126         <p>So, Sony caved in
2127 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2128 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2129 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2130 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2131 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2132 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2133 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2134 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2135 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2136 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2137 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2138 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2139 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2140
2141 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2142 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2143 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2144 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2145
2146 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2147 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2148 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2149 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2150 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2151 income. :)</p>
2152
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="tags">
2155
2156
2157         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2158
2159
2160       </div>
2161     </div>
2162     <div class="padding"></div>
2163
2164     <div class="entry">
2165       <div class="title">
2166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
2167       </div>
2168       <div class="date">
2169         22nd November 2014
2170       </div>
2171       <div class="body">
2172         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2173 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2174 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2175 courtesy of
2176 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2177 Schubert</a> and
2178 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2179 McVittie</a>.
2180
2181 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2182 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2183 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2184 you upgrade:</p>
2185
2186 <p><blockquote><pre>
2187 Package: systemd-sysv
2188 Pin: release o=Debian
2189 Pin-Priority: -1
2190 </pre></blockquote><p>
2191
2192 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2193 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2194 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2195 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2196 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2197
2198 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2199 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2200 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2201 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2202 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2203 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2204
2205 <p><blockquote><pre>
2206 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2207 </pre></blockquote><p>
2208
2209 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2210
2211 <p><blockquote><pre>
2212 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2213 </pre></blockquote><p>
2214
2215 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2216 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2217
2218 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2219 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2220 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2221 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2222 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2223 Jessie is released.</p>
2224
2225 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2226 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2227 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2228 line.</p>
2229
2230       </div>
2231       <div class="tags">
2232
2233
2234         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2235
2236
2237       </div>
2238     </div>
2239     <div class="padding"></div>
2240
2241     <div class="entry">
2242       <div class="title">
2243         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="date">
2246         10th November 2014
2247       </div>
2248       <div class="body">
2249         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2250 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2251 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2252
2253 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2254 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2255 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2256 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2257 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2258 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2259 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2260 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2261 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2262 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2263 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2264 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2265 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2266 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2267 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2268
2269 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2270 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2271 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2272 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2273 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2274 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2275 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2276 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2277 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2278 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2279 were fairly easy, and
2280 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2281 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2282 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2283 useful approach.</p>
2284
2285 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2286 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2287 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2288 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2289 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2290 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2291 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2292 this:</p>
2293
2294 <p><blockquote><pre>
2295 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2296   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2297 </pre></blockquote></p>
2298
2299 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2300 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2301
2302 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2303 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2304 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2305 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2306 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2307 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2308 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2309 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2310 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2311 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2312 system.</p>
2313
2314 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2315 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2316 SMTorP. :)</p>
2317
2318       </div>
2319       <div class="tags">
2320
2321
2322         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2323
2324
2325       </div>
2326     </div>
2327     <div class="padding"></div>
2328
2329     <div class="entry">
2330       <div class="title">
2331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2332       </div>
2333       <div class="date">
2334         27th October 2014
2335       </div>
2336       <div class="body">
2337         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2338 sent out
2339 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2340 announcement</a>:</p>
2341
2342 <pre>
2343 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2344 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2345
2346 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2347 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2348 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2349 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2350 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2351 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2352 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2353
2354 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2355 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2356 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2357 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2358 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2359 of at least 5 characters!
2360
2361  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2362
2363 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2364 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2365 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2366 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2367 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2368
2369 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2370 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2371
2372 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2373 ===============================
2374
2375 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2376 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2377 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2378 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2379 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2380 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2381 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2382 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2383 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2384 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2385 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2386 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2387 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2388 environment.
2389
2390  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2391  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2392
2393 Full release notes and manual
2394 =============================
2395
2396 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2397 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2398 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2399 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2400 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2401
2402  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2403  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2404
2405 Where to get it
2406 ---------------
2407
2408 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2409
2410  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2411  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2412  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2413
2414 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2415
2416 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2417 ===============================================================================
2418
2419
2420 Installation changes
2421 --------------------
2422
2423  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2424
2425 Software updates
2426 ----------------
2427
2428 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2429
2430  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2431  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2432    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2433    choose one of the others see manual.)
2434  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2435  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2436  * GOsa 2.7.4
2437  * LTSP 5.5.4
2438  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2439  * new boot framework: systemd
2440  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2441  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2442  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2443  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2444  * golearn 0.9
2445  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2446  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2447  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2448    installation.
2449  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2450    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2451
2452  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2453  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2454
2455 Fixed bugs
2456 ----------
2457
2458  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2459    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2460    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2461  * and many others.
2462
2463 Documentation and translation updates
2464 -------------------------------------
2465
2466  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2467    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2468    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2469
2470 Other changes
2471 -------------
2472
2473  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2474    server takes more time.
2475  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2476    doesn't work.
2477
2478 Regressions / known problems
2479 ----------------------------
2480
2481  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2482    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2483    and Debian bug #762103).
2484  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2485    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2486  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2487    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2488    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2489
2490 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2491
2492  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2493
2494 How to report bugs
2495 ------------------
2496
2497 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2498
2499 About Debian
2500 ============
2501
2502 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2503 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2504 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2505 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2506 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2507 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2508 operating system.
2509
2510 Contact Information
2511 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2512 mail to press@debian.org.
2513
2514  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2515 </pre>
2516
2517       </div>
2518       <div class="tags">
2519
2520
2521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2522
2523
2524       </div>
2525     </div>
2526     <div class="padding"></div>
2527
2528     <div class="entry">
2529       <div class="title">
2530         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2531       </div>
2532       <div class="date">
2533         23rd October 2014
2534       </div>
2535       <div class="body">
2536         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2537 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2538 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2539 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2540 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2541 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2542 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2543 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2544 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2545 live.</p>
2546
2547 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2548 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2549 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2550 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2551 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2552 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2553 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2554 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2555
2556       </div>
2557       <div class="tags">
2558
2559
2560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2561
2562
2563       </div>
2564     </div>
2565     <div class="padding"></div>
2566
2567     <div class="entry">
2568       <div class="title">
2569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2570       </div>
2571       <div class="date">
2572         22nd October 2014
2573       </div>
2574       <div class="body">
2575         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2576 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2577 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2578 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2579 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2580 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2581 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2582 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2583 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2584 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2585 lists I recently took over:</p>
2586
2587 <p><blockquote><pre>
2588 % time listadmin xiph
2589 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2590 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2591
2592 real    0m1.709s
2593 user    0m0.232s
2594 sys     0m0.012s
2595 %
2596 </pre></blockquote></p>
2597
2598 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2599 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2600 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2601 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2602 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2603 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2604 program.</p>
2605
2606 <p>If you install
2607 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2608 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2609 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2610
2611 <p><blockquote><pre>
2612 username username@example.org
2613 spamlevel 23
2614 default discard
2615 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2616
2617 password secret
2618 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2619 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2620
2621 password hidden
2622 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2623 </pre></blockquote></p>
2624
2625 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2626 learn the details.</p>
2627
2628 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2629 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2630 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2631 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2632
2633 <p><blockquote><pre>
2634 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2635 </pre></blockquote></p>
2636
2637 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2638 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2639 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2640 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2641 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2642 email.</p>
2643
2644 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2645 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2646 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2647 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2648 software.</p>
2649
2650 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2651 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2652 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2653
2654 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2655 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2656 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2657 sure why.</p>
2658
2659       </div>
2660       <div class="tags">
2661
2662
2663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2664
2665
2666       </div>
2667     </div>
2668     <div class="padding"></div>
2669
2670     <div class="entry">
2671       <div class="title">
2672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2673       </div>
2674       <div class="date">
2675         17th October 2014
2676       </div>
2677       <div class="body">
2678         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2679 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2680 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2681 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2682 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2683 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2684 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2685
2686 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2687 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2688 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2689 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2690 of this story.)</p>
2691
2692 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2693 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2694 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2695 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2696 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2697 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2698 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2699 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2700 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2701 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2702
2703 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2704 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2705 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2706 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2707
2708 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2709 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2710
2711 <p><blockquote><pre>
2712 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2713 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2714 </pre></blockquote></p>
2715
2716 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2717 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2718 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2719 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2720 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2721 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2722 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2723 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2724
2725 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2726 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2727
2728 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2729 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2730 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2731 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2732 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2733
2734 <p><blockquote><pre>
2735 Task: isenkram-packages
2736 Section: hardware
2737 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2738  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2739  proposed.
2740 Test-new-install: show show
2741 Relevance: 8
2742 Packages: for-current-hardware
2743
2744 Task: isenkram-firmware
2745 Section: hardware
2746 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2747  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2748  packages are proposed.
2749 Test-new-install: mark show
2750 Relevance: 8
2751 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2752 </pre></blockquote></p>
2753
2754 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2755 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2756 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2757 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2758 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2759
2760 <p><blockquote><pre>
2761 #!/bin/sh
2762 #
2763 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2764 export PATH
2765 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2766 </pre></blockquote></p>
2767
2768 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2769 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2770
2771 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2772 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2773 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2774 install.</p>
2775
2776 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2777 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2778 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2779
2780       </div>
2781       <div class="tags">
2782
2783
2784         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2785
2786
2787       </div>
2788     </div>
2789     <div class="padding"></div>
2790
2791     <div class="entry">
2792       <div class="title">
2793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
2794       </div>
2795       <div class="date">
2796          4th October 2014
2797       </div>
2798       <div class="body">
2799         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2800 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2801 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2802 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2803
2804 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2805
2806 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2807 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2808 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2809
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="tags">
2812
2813
2814         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2815
2816
2817       </div>
2818     </div>
2819     <div class="padding"></div>
2820
2821     <div class="entry">
2822       <div class="title">
2823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
2824       </div>
2825       <div class="date">
2826          4th October 2014
2827       </div>
2828       <div class="body">
2829         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2830 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2831 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2832 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2833 Dibb.</p>
2834
2835 <p>I just wrapped up
2836 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2837 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2838 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2839 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2840 0.17.</p>
2841
2842 <ul>
2843
2844  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2845  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2846    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2847  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2848  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2849  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2850  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2851  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2852  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2853    the palette size is the same.</li>
2854  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2855  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2856  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2857  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2858    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2859
2860 </ul>
2861
2862 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2863 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2864 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2865
2866       </div>
2867       <div class="tags">
2868
2869
2870         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2871
2872
2873       </div>
2874     </div>
2875     <div class="padding"></div>
2876
2877     <div class="entry">
2878       <div class="title">
2879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2880       </div>
2881       <div class="date">
2882         26th September 2014
2883       </div>
2884       <div class="body">
2885         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2886 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2887 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2888 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2889 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2890 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2891 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2892 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2893 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2894 future.  The
2895 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2896 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2897 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2898 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2899 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2900
2901 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2902 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2903 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2904 or rsync (use
2905 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2906 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2907 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2908 install with some tweaking.</p>
2909
2910 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2911 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2912
2913 <p><blockquote><pre>
2914 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2915 </pre></blockquote></p>
2916
2917 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2918 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2919 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2920 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2921
2922 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2923 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2924 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2925 your need.</p>
2926
2927 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2928 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2929 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2930 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2931 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2932 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2933 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2934 days.</p>
2935
2936 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2937 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2938 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2939 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2940 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2941 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2942 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2943 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2944 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2945
2946 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2947 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2948 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2949
2950       </div>
2951       <div class="tags">
2952
2953
2954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2955
2956
2957       </div>
2958     </div>
2959     <div class="padding"></div>
2960
2961     <div class="entry">
2962       <div class="title">
2963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
2964       </div>
2965       <div class="date">
2966         25th September 2014
2967       </div>
2968       <div class="body">
2969         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2970 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2971 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2972 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2973 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2974 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2975 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2976 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2977 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2978 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2979 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2980 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2981 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2982
2983 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2984 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2985 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2986 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2987 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2988 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2989 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2990 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2991 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2992 list</a>. :)</p>
2993
2994       </div>
2995       <div class="tags">
2996
2997
2998         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2999
3000
3001       </div>
3002     </div>
3003     <div class="padding"></div>
3004
3005     <div class="entry">
3006       <div class="title">
3007         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
3008       </div>
3009       <div class="date">
3010         16th September 2014
3011       </div>
3012       <div class="body">
3013         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3014 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3015 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3016 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3017 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3018 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3019 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3020 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3021 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3022 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3023 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3024 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3025 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3026 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3027
3028 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3029 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3030 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3031 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3032 depend on the small and clever package
3033 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3034 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3035 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3036 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3037 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3038 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3039 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3040 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3041 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3042 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3043 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3044
3045 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3046 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3047 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3048 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3049 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3050 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3051 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3052 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3053 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3054 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3055 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3056 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3057 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3058 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3059 dialog.</p>
3060
3061 <p><table>
3062
3063 <tr>
3064 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3065 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3066 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3067 <th>Reduction</th>
3068 </tr>
3069
3070 <tr>
3071 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3072 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3073 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3074 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3075 </tr>
3076
3077 <tr>
3078 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3079 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3080 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3081 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3082 </tr>
3083
3084 <tr>
3085 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3086 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3087 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3088 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3089 </tr>
3090
3091 <tr>
3092 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3093 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3094 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3095 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3096 </tr>
3097
3098 <tr>
3099 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3100 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3101 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3102 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3103 </tr>
3104
3105 </table></p>
3106
3107 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3108 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3109 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3110 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3111 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3112 installed.</p>
3113
3114 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3115 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3116 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3117 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3118 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3119 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3120 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3121 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3122 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3123 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3124 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3125 for the entire installation.</p>
3126
3127 <p>I've implemented this in the
3128 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3129 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3130 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3131 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3132 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3133
3134 <p><blockquote><pre>
3135 #!/bin/sh
3136 set -e
3137 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3138 info() {
3139     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3140 }
3141 error() {
3142     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3143 }
3144 override_install() {
3145     apt-install eatmydata || true
3146     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3147         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3148             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3149             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3150             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3151                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3152                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3153                     > /target$file.edu
3154                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3155                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3156                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3157                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3158             else
3159                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3160             fi
3161         done
3162     else
3163         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3164     fi
3165 }
3166
3167 override_install
3168 </pre></blockquote></p>
3169
3170 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3171 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3172
3173 <p><blockquote><pre>
3174 #! /bin/sh -e
3175 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3176 error() {
3177     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3178 }
3179 remove_install_override() {
3180     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3181         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3182         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3183             rm /target$file
3184             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3185                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3186             rm /target$file.edu
3187         else
3188             error "Missing divert for $file."
3189         fi
3190     done
3191     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3192 }
3193
3194 remove_install_override
3195 </pre></blockquote></p>
3196
3197 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3198 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3199 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3200
3201 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3202 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3203 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3204 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3205 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3206 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3207 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3208 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3209 everyone.</p>
3210
3211 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3212 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3213 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3214 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3215
3216 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3217 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3218 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3219 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3220 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3221
3222 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3223 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3224 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3225 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3226 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3227
3228       </div>
3229       <div class="tags">
3230
3231
3232         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3233
3234
3235       </div>
3236     </div>
3237     <div class="padding"></div>
3238
3239     <div class="entry">
3240       <div class="title">
3241         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
3242       </div>
3243       <div class="date">
3244         10th September 2014
3245       </div>
3246       <div class="body">
3247         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3248 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3249 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3250 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3251 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3252 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3253 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3254 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3255 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3256 those problems are gone now.</p>
3257
3258 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3259 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3260 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3261 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3262 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3263
3264 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3265 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3266 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3267
3268 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3269 line:</p>
3270
3271 <p><blockquote><pre>
3272 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3273 </pre></blockquote></p>
3274
3275 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3276 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3277 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3278 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3279
3280 <p><blockquote><pre>
3281 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3282 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3283 %
3284 </pre></blockquote></p>
3285
3286 <p>Now if only
3287 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3288 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3289 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3290 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3291 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3292 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3293 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3294 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3295 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3296
3297       </div>
3298       <div class="tags">
3299
3300
3301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3302
3303
3304       </div>
3305     </div>
3306     <div class="padding"></div>
3307
3308     <div class="entry">
3309       <div class="title">
3310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="date">
3313         25th August 2014
3314       </div>
3315       <div class="body">
3316         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3317 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3318 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3319 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3320 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3321 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3322 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3323 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3324 am not sure.
3325 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3326 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3327 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3328 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3329 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3330 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3331 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3332 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3333 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3334 licenses are.</p>
3335
3336 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3337 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3338 end user</a>
3339 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3340 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3341
3342 <p><blockquote>
3343 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3344 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3345
3346 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3347 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3348 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3349 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3350 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3351 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3352 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3353 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3354 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3355 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3356 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3357 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3358 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3359 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3360 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3361 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3362 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3363 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3364
3365 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3366 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3367
3368 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3369 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3370 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3371 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3372 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3373 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3374 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3375 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3376 </blockquote></p>
3377
3378 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3379 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3380
3381 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3382 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3383
3384 <p><blockquote>
3385
3386 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3387 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3388 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3389 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3390 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3391 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3392 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3393 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3394 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3395 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3396 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3397 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3398
3399 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3400 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3401 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3402 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3403 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3404 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3405 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3406 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3407 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3408 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3409 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3410 additional details.</p>
3411
3412 </blockquote></p>
3413
3414 <p>Some free software like
3415 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3416 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3417 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3418 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3419
3420       </div>
3421       <div class="tags">
3422
3423
3424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3425
3426
3427       </div>
3428     </div>
3429     <div class="padding"></div>
3430
3431     <div class="entry">
3432       <div class="title">
3433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3434       </div>
3435       <div class="date">
3436         31st July 2014
3437       </div>
3438       <div class="body">
3439         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3440 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3441 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3442 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3443 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3444 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3445
3446 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3447
3448 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3449 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3450 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3451 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3452 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3453 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3454 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3455 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3456
3457 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3458 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3459 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3460 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3461 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3462 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3463
3464 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3465 project?</strong></p>
3466
3467 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3468 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3469 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3470 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3471 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3472 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3473 with this job.</p>
3474
3475 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3476 Edu?</strong></p>
3477
3478 <p>The independence.</p>
3479
3480 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3481 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3482 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3483
3484 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3485 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3486 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3487 working reliable. </p>
3488
3489 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3490 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3491 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3492 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3493 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3494 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3495 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3496 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3497
3498 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3499 Edu?</strong></p>
3500
3501 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3502 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3503 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3504
3505 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3506
3507 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3508 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3509
3510 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3511 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3512
3513 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3514 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3515 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3516 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3517 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3518 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3519 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3520
3521       </div>
3522       <div class="tags">
3523
3524
3525         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3526
3527
3528       </div>
3529     </div>
3530     <div class="padding"></div>
3531
3532     <div class="entry">
3533       <div class="title">
3534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
3535       </div>
3536       <div class="date">
3537         23rd July 2014
3538       </div>
3539       <div class="body">
3540         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3541 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3542 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3543 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3544 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3545 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3546 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3547 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3548 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3549 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3550 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3551 the translation show this very well:</p>
3552
3553 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3554
3555 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3556 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3557 project pages and the
3558 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3559 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3560 and HTML version available in the
3561 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3562 directory</a>.</p>
3563
3564 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3565 you find any.</p>
3566
3567       </div>
3568       <div class="tags">
3569
3570
3571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3572
3573
3574       </div>
3575     </div>
3576     <div class="padding"></div>
3577
3578     <div class="entry">
3579       <div class="title">
3580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
3581       </div>
3582       <div class="date">
3583         17th June 2014
3584       </div>
3585       <div class="body">
3586         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3587 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3588 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3589 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3590 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3591
3592 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3593 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3594 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3595 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3596 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3597 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3598 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3599 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3600 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3601 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3602 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3603 goals.</p>
3604
3605 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3606 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3607 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3608 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3609 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3610 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3611 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3612 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3613 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3614 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3615 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3616 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3617 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3618 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3619 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3620 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3621 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3622 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3623 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3624 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3625 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3626 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3627 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3628 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3629
3630 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3631 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3632 track the English original.  For this we use the
3633 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3634 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3635 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3636 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3637 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3638 files), which the translations update with the native language
3639 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3640 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3641 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3642 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3643 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3644 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3645 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3646 of the documentation.</p>
3647
3648 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3649 recommend using
3650 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3651 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3652 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3653 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3654 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3655 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3656 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3657 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3658
3659 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3660 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3661 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3662 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3663 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3664 translated images by storing translated versions in
3665 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3666 package maintainers know more.</p>
3667
3668 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3669 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3670 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3671 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3672 PDF version</a> or the
3673 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3674 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3675 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3676
3677 <p>To learn more, check out
3678 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3679 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3680 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3681 manual on the wiki</a> and
3682 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3683 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3684
3685       </div>
3686       <div class="tags">
3687
3688
3689         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3690
3691
3692       </div>
3693     </div>
3694     <div class="padding"></div>
3695
3696     <div class="entry">
3697       <div class="title">
3698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3699       </div>
3700       <div class="date">
3701         29th May 2014
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="body">
3704         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3705 in my car, connected to
3706 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3707 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3708 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3709 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3710 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3711 such car computer.</p>
3712
3713 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3714
3715 <ul>
3716
3717  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3718
3719  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3720    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3721    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3722    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3723    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3724
3725  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3726    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3727    route.</li>
3728
3729  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3730
3731  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3732    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3733    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3734    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3735    connection do not work.</li>
3736
3737  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3738    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3739
3740  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3741    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3742
3743  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3744    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3745
3746 </ul>
3747
3748 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3749 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3750
3751       </div>
3752       <div class="tags">
3753
3754
3755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3756
3757
3758       </div>
3759     </div>
3760     <div class="padding"></div>
3761
3762     <div class="entry">
3763       <div class="title">
3764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="date">
3767         29th April 2014
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="body">
3770         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3771 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3772 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3773 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3774 newer AVM2 format - see
3775 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3776 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3777 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3778 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3779 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3780 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3781 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3782 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3783 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3784 sites do not work yet.</p>
3785
3786 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3787 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3788 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3789 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3790 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3791 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3792 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3793 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3794 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3795 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3796 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3797
3798 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3799 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3800 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3801 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3802 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3803 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3804 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3805
3806 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3807 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3808 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3809 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3810 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3811
3812       </div>
3813       <div class="tags">
3814
3815
3816         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3817
3818
3819       </div>
3820     </div>
3821     <div class="padding"></div>
3822
3823     <div class="entry">
3824       <div class="title">
3825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
3826       </div>
3827       <div class="date">
3828         23rd April 2014
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="body">
3831         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3832 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3833 So I implemented one, using
3834 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3835 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3836 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3837 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3838 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3839 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3840
3841 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3842 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3843 packages to install.  The first part is in
3844 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3845 this:</p>
3846
3847 <p><blockquote><pre>
3848 Task: isenkram
3849 Section: hardware
3850 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3851  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3852  proposed.
3853 Test-new-install: mark show
3854 Relevance: 8
3855 Packages: for-current-hardware
3856 </pre></blockquote></p>
3857
3858 <p>The second part is in
3859 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3860 this:</p>
3861
3862 <p><blockquote><pre>
3863 #!/bin/sh
3864 #
3865 (
3866     isenkram-lookup
3867     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3868 ) | sort -u
3869 </pre></blockquote></p>
3870
3871 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3872 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3873 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3874 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3875 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3876 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3877
3878 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3879 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3880 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3881 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3882 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3883 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3884 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3885 the python-apt code (bug
3886 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3887 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3888 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3889 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3890 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3891 unstable today.</p>
3892
3893 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3894 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3895 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3896 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3897 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3898 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3899 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3900 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3901 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3902
3903 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3904 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3905 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3906 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3907 package.  See also
3908 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3909 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3910 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3911 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3912
3913       </div>
3914       <div class="tags">
3915
3916
3917         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3918
3919
3920       </div>
3921     </div>
3922     <div class="padding"></div>
3923
3924     <div class="entry">
3925       <div class="title">
3926         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="date">
3929         15th April 2014
3930       </div>
3931       <div class="body">
3932         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3933 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3934 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3935 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3936 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3937 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3938
3939 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3940 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3941 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3942 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3943 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3944 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3945 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3946
3947 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3948 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3949 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3950 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3951 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3952 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3953 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3954 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3955 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3956 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3957 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3958 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3959
3960 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3961 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3962 become root:</p>
3963
3964 <p><pre>
3965 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3966   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3967   u-boot-tools
3968 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3969   freedom-maker
3970 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3971 </pre></p>
3972
3973 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3974 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3975 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3976 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3977 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3978 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3979 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3980 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3981
3982 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3983 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3984 the preseed values:</p>
3985
3986 <p><pre>
3987 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3988 </pre></p>
3989
3990 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3991 it still work.</p>
3992
3993 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3994 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3995 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3996 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3997 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3998 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3999 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
4000
4001 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4002 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4003 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4004 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4005 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4006 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4007
4008       </div>
4009       <div class="tags">
4010
4011
4012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4013
4014
4015       </div>
4016     </div>
4017     <div class="padding"></div>
4018
4019     <div class="entry">
4020       <div class="title">
4021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
4022       </div>
4023       <div class="date">
4024          9th April 2014
4025       </div>
4026       <div class="body">
4027         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
4028 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
4029 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
4030 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
4031 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
4032 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
4033 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
4034 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
4035 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
4036 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
4037 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
4038 have looked at a system called
4039 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
4040 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
4041
4042 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
4043 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
4044 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
4045 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
4046 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
4047 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
4048 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
4049 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
4050 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
4051 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
4052 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
4053 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
4054 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
4055
4056 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
4057 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
4058 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
4059 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
4060 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
4061 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
4062 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
4063 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
4064 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
4065 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
4066 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
4067 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
4068 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
4069 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
4070 account.</p>
4071
4072 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
4073 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
4074 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
4075 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4076 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4077 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4078 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4079
4080 <p><blockquote><pre>
4081 [s3c]
4082 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4083 backend-login: API-login
4084 backend-password: API-password
4085 fs-passphrase: local-password
4086 </pre></blockquote></p>
4087
4088 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4089 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4090 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4091 details and password to create it:</p>
4092
4093 <p><blockquote><pre>
4094 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4095 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4096   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4097 Enter backend login:
4098 Enter backend password:
4099 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4100 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4101 Enter encryption password:
4102 Confirm encryption password:
4103 Generating random encryption key...
4104 Creating metadata tables...
4105 Dumping metadata...
4106 ..objects..
4107 ..blocks..
4108 ..inodes..
4109 ..inode_blocks..
4110 ..symlink_targets..
4111 ..names..
4112 ..contents..
4113 ..ext_attributes..
4114 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4115 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4116 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4117
4118 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4119
4120 <p><blockquote><pre>
4121 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4122   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4123 Using 4 upload threads.
4124 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4125 Reading metadata...
4126 ..objects..
4127 ..blocks..
4128 ..inodes..
4129 ..inode_blocks..
4130 ..symlink_targets..
4131 ..names..
4132 ..contents..
4133 ..ext_attributes..
4134 Mounting filesystem...
4135 # df -h /s3ql
4136 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4137 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4138 #
4139 </pre></blockquote></p>
4140
4141 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4142 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4143 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4144 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4145 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4146 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4147
4148 <p><blockquote><pre>
4149 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4150 #
4151 </pre></blockquote></p>
4152
4153 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4154 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4155 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4156 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4157 file system:</p>
4158
4159 <p><blockquote><pre>
4160 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4161 Using cached metadata.
4162 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4163 Checking DB integrity...
4164 Creating temporary extra indices...
4165 Checking lost+found...
4166 Checking cached objects...
4167 Checking names (refcounts)...
4168 Checking contents (names)...
4169 Checking contents (inodes)...
4170 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4171 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4172 Checking objects (backend)...
4173 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4174 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4175 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4176 Checking objects (sizes)...
4177 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4178 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4179 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4180 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4181 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4182 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4183 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4184 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4185 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4186 Checking directory reachability...
4187 Checking unix conventions...
4188 Checking referential integrity...
4189 Dropping temporary indices...
4190 Backing up old metadata...
4191 Dumping metadata...
4192 ..objects..
4193 ..blocks..
4194 ..inodes..
4195 ..inode_blocks..
4196 ..symlink_targets..
4197 ..names..
4198 ..contents..
4199 ..ext_attributes..
4200 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4201 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4202 #
4203 </pre></blockquote></p>
4204
4205 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4206 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4207 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4208 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4209 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4210 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4211 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4212 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4213 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4214 working set.</p>
4215
4216 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4217 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4218 busy:</p>
4219
4220 <p><blockquote><pre>
4221 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4222   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4223 Using 8 upload threads.
4224 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4225 #
4226 </pre></blockquote></p>
4227
4228 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4229 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4230 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4231 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4232 s3qlctrl:
4233
4234 <p><blockquote><pre>
4235 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4236 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4237 #
4238 </pre></blockquote></p>
4239
4240 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4241 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4242 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4243 a report:</p>
4244
4245 <p><blockquote><pre>
4246 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4247 Directory entries:    9141
4248 Inodes:               9143
4249 Data blocks:          8851
4250 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4251 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4252 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4253 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4254 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4255 #
4256 </pre></blockquote></p>
4257
4258 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4259 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4260 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4261 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4262 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4263 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4264 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4265 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4266 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4267 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4268 best.</p>
4269
4270 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4271 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4272 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4273 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4274 poster is titled
4275 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4276 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4277 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4278 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4279 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4280
4281 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4282 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4283 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4284 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4286 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4287 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4288 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4289
4290 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4291 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4292 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4293 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4294 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4295 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4296 only read from it.</p>
4297
4298 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4299 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4300 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4301
4302       </div>
4303       <div class="tags">
4304
4305
4306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4307
4308
4309       </div>
4310     </div>
4311     <div class="padding"></div>
4312
4313     <div class="entry">
4314       <div class="title">
4315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4316       </div>
4317       <div class="date">
4318          1st April 2014
4319       </div>
4320       <div class="body">
4321         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4322 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4323 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4324 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4325 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4326 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4327 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4328 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4329 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4330 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4331 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4332 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4333 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4334
4335 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4336 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4337 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4338 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4339 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4340 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4341 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4342 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4343 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4344 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4345 Linux.</p>
4346
4347 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4348 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4349 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4350 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4351 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4352 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4353 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4354 Windows before metro).</p>
4355
4356 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4357 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4358 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4359 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4360 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4361 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4362 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4363 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4364 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4365 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4366 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4367 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4368 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4369 image.</p>
4370
4371       </div>
4372       <div class="tags">
4373
4374
4375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
4376
4377
4378       </div>
4379     </div>
4380     <div class="padding"></div>
4381
4382     <div class="entry">
4383       <div class="title">
4384         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4385       </div>
4386       <div class="date">
4387         30th March 2014
4388       </div>
4389       <div class="body">
4390         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4391 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4392 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4393 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4394 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4395
4396 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4397
4398 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4399 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4400 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4401 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4402 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4403
4404 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4405 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4406 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4407
4408 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4409 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4410 hunger.</p>
4411
4412 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4413 project?</strong></p>
4414
4415 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4416 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4417 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4418 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4419 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4420 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4421 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4422 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4423 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4424 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4425
4426 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4427 Edu?</strong></p>
4428
4429 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4430 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4431 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4432 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4433 be made of steel.</p>
4434
4435 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4436 Edu?</strong></p>
4437
4438 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4439
4440 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4441 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4442 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4443 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4444 or dropped.</p>
4445
4446 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4447 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4448 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4449 discourage many people too.</p>
4450
4451 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4452
4453 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4454 Virtualbox.</p>
4455
4456
4457 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4458 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4459
4460 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4461 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4462 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4463 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4464 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4465 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4466 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4467 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4468 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4469
4470       </div>
4471       <div class="tags">
4472
4473
4474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4475
4476
4477       </div>
4478     </div>
4479     <div class="padding"></div>
4480
4481     <div class="entry">
4482       <div class="title">
4483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4484       </div>
4485       <div class="date">
4486         25th March 2014
4487       </div>
4488       <div class="body">
4489         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4490 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4491 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4492 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4493 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4494 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4495 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4496 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4497 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4498
4499 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4500 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4501 looked a given way.  Such
4502 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4503 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4504 called a
4505 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4506 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4507 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4508 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4509 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4510 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4511 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4512 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4513 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4514 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4515 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4516 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4517 There are several commercial services around providing such
4518 timestamping.  A quick search for
4519 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4520 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4521 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4522 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4523 Vadis</a>,
4524 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4525 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4526 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4527 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4528
4529 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4530 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4531 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4532 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4533 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4534 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4535 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4536 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4537 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4538 Greifswald.</p>
4539
4540 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4541 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4542 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4543 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4544 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4545
4546 <p><blockquote><pre>
4547 #!/bin/sh
4548 set -e
4549 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4550 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4551 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4552 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4553 cafile=chain.txt
4554 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4555     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4556 fi
4557 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4558     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4559 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4560 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4561 base64 < "$resfile"
4562 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4563 </pre></blockquote></p>
4564
4565 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4566 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4567 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4568 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4569 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4570 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4571 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4572 changed.</p>
4573
4574 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4575 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4576 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4577 to set up?</p>
4578
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="tags">
4581
4582
4583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4584
4585
4586       </div>
4587     </div>
4588     <div class="padding"></div>
4589
4590     <div class="entry">
4591       <div class="title">
4592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
4593       </div>
4594       <div class="date">
4595         21st March 2014
4596       </div>
4597       <div class="body">
4598         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4599 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4600 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4601 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4602 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4603 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4604 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4605
4606 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4607 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4608 tried using
4609 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4610 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4611 and program
4612 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4613 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4614 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4615 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4616 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4617 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4618 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4619 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4620 this method.</p>
4621
4622 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4623 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4624 problem is
4625 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4626 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4627 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4628 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4629 DVD structures, as the python library
4630 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4631 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4632 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4633 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4634 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4635 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4636
4637 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4638 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4639
4640       </div>
4641       <div class="tags">
4642
4643
4644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4645
4646
4647       </div>
4648     </div>
4649     <div class="padding"></div>
4650
4651     <div class="entry">
4652       <div class="title">
4653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="date">
4656         14th March 2014
4657       </div>
4658       <div class="body">
4659         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4660 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4661 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4662 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4663 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4664 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4665 release (0.2).</p>
4666
4667 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4668 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4669 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4670 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4671 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4672 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4673 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4674 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4675 and build using
4676 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4677 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4678
4679 <pre>
4680 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4681   freedom-maker
4682 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4683   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4684   u-boot-tools
4685 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4686 </pre>
4687
4688 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4689 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4690 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4691 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4692 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4693 kpartx call.</p>
4694
4695 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4696 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4697 the preseed values:</p>
4698
4699 <pre>
4700 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4701 </pre>
4702
4703 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4704 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4705 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4706 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4707 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4708 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4709
4710 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4711 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4712 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4713 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4714 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4715 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4716
4717       </div>
4718       <div class="tags">
4719
4720
4721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4722
4723
4724       </div>
4725     </div>
4726     <div class="padding"></div>
4727
4728     <div class="entry">
4729       <div class="title">
4730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4731       </div>
4732       <div class="date">
4733         12th March 2014
4734       </div>
4735       <div class="body">
4736         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4737 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4738 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4739 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4740 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4741 document this better when one of the customers of
4742 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4743 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4744 get this working are the following:</p>
4745
4746 <p><ol>
4747
4748 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4749 example host here.</li>
4750
4751 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4752 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4753
4754 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4755 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4756
4757 </ol></p>
4758
4759 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4760 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4761 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4762 started).</p>
4763
4764 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4765 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4766
4767 <p><blockquote><pre>
4768 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4769 Export list for nas-server:
4770 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4771 root@tjener:~#
4772 </pre></blockquote></p>
4773
4774 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4775 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4776 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4777 NFS access.</p>
4778
4779 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4780 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4781 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4782
4783 <p><blockquote><pre>
4784 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4785 </pre></blockquote></p>
4786
4787 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4788 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4789 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4790 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4791
4792 <p><blockquote><pre>
4793 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4794 objectClass: automount
4795 cn: nas-server
4796 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4797
4798 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4799 objectClass: top
4800 objectClass: automountMap
4801 ou: auto.nas-server
4802
4803 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4804 objectClass: automount
4805 cn: /
4806 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4807 </pre></blockquote></p>
4808
4809 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4810 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4811 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4812
4813 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4814 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4815 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4816 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4817
4818       </div>
4819       <div class="tags">
4820
4821
4822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>.
4823
4824
4825       </div>
4826     </div>
4827     <div class="padding"></div>
4828
4829     <div class="entry">
4830       <div class="title">
4831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
4832       </div>
4833       <div class="date">
4834         22nd February 2014
4835       </div>
4836       <div class="body">
4837         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4838 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4839 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4840 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4841 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4842 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4843 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4844 proper home since then.</p>
4845
4846 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4847 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4848 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4849 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4850 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4851
4852 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4853 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4854 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4855 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4856 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4857 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4858 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4859 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4860 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4861
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="tags">
4864
4865
4866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4867
4868
4869       </div>
4870     </div>
4871     <div class="padding"></div>
4872
4873     <div class="entry">
4874       <div class="title">
4875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4876       </div>
4877       <div class="date">
4878          3rd February 2014
4879       </div>
4880       <div class="body">
4881         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4882 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4883 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4884 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4885 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4886 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4887 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4888 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
4889 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4890
4891 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4892 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4893 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4894 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4895 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4896 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4897
4898 <p><blockquote><pre>
4899 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4900 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4901 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4902 dhclient /dev/eth0
4903 </pre></blockquote></p>
4904
4905 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4906 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4907 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4908
4909 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4910 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4911 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4912 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4913 side.</p>
4914
4915 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4916 stuff:</p>
4917
4918 <p><blockquote><pre>
4919 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4920 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4921 EOF
4922 apt-get update
4923 apt-get dist-upgrade
4924 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4925     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4926 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4927 </pre></blockquote></p>
4928
4929 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4930 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4931 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4932 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4933 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4934 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4935 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4936 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4937 ssh instead.
4938
4939 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4940 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4941 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4942 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4943 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4944 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4945
4946 <p><blockquote><pre>
4947 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4948 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4949 EOF
4950 </pre></blockquote></p>
4951
4952 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4953 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4954 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4955 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4956
4957 <p><blockquote><pre>
4958 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4959 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4960 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4961 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4962 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4963 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4964 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4965 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4966 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4967 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4968 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4969 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4970 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4971 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4972 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4973 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4974 #
4975 </pre></blockquote></p>
4976
4977 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4978 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4979 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4980 command line stuff.<p>
4981
4982       </div>
4983       <div class="tags">
4984
4985
4986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4987
4988
4989       </div>
4990     </div>
4991     <div class="padding"></div>
4992
4993     <div class="entry">
4994       <div class="title">
4995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4996       </div>
4997       <div class="date">
4998         29th January 2014
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="body">
5001         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
5002 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
5003 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
5004 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
5005 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
5006 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
5007 investigated in
5008 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
5009 from December 2013, in the article
5010 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
5011 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
5012 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
5013 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
5014 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
5015 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
5016 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
5017 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
5018
5019 <p><blockquote>
5020 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
5021 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
5022 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
5023 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
5024 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
5025 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
5026 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
5027 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
5028 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
5029 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
5030 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
5031 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
5032
5033 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
5034 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
5035 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
5036 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
5037 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
5038 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
5039 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
5040 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
5041 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
5042 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
5043 </blockquote><p>
5044
5045 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
5046 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
5047 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
5048 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
5049 summarized like this:</p>
5050
5051 <p><blockquote>
5052 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
5053 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
5054 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
5055 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
5056 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
5057 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
5058 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
5059 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
5060 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
5061 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
5062 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
5063 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
5064 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
5065 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
5066 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
5067 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
5068 </blockquote></p>
5069
5070 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
5071 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
5072 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
5073 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
5074
5075 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5076 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5077 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5078
5079       </div>
5080       <div class="tags">
5081
5082
5083         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
5084
5085
5086       </div>
5087     </div>
5088     <div class="padding"></div>
5089
5090     <div class="entry">
5091       <div class="title">
5092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5093       </div>
5094       <div class="date">
5095         14th January 2014
5096       </div>
5097       <div class="body">
5098         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5099 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5100 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5101 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5102 the source.  The company behind it provide
5103 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5104 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5105 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5106 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5107 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5108 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5109 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5110 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5111 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5112 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5113 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5114 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5115 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5116 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5117 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5118 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5119 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5120 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5121 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5122
5123 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5124
5125 <ul>
5126
5127   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5128   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5129   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5130
5131 </ul>
5132
5133 <p>You can
5134 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5135 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5136 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5137 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5138 include a test suite check.</p>
5139
5140       </div>
5141       <div class="tags">
5142
5143
5144         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5145
5146
5147       </div>
5148     </div>
5149     <div class="padding"></div>
5150
5151     <div class="entry">
5152       <div class="title">
5153         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5154       </div>
5155       <div class="date">
5156         25th December 2013
5157       </div>
5158       <div class="body">
5159         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5160 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5161 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5162 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5163 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5164 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5165 George</a>.</p>
5166
5167 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5168
5169 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5170
5171 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5172 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5173 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5174 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5175 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5176 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5177
5178 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5179 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5180 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5181 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5182 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5183 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5184 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5185 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5186 scratch.</p>
5187
5188 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5189 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5190 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5191
5192 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5193 and cycling.</p>
5194
5195 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5196 project?</strong></p>
5197
5198 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5199 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5200 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5201 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5202 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5203 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5204
5205 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5206 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5207 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5208 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5209 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5210 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5211 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5212 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5213 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5214
5215 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5216 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5217 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5218 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5219
5220 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5221 Edu?</strong></p>
5222
5223 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5224 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5225 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5226 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5227 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5228 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5229 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5230 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5231 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5232 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5233 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5234 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5235 that it rocks!</p>
5236
5237 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5238 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5239 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5240 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5241 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5242 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5243 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5244
5245 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5246 Edu?</strong></p>
5247
5248 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5249 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5250 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5251 can list a few points about that:</p>
5252
5253 <ul>
5254
5255  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5256  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5257  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5258
5259 </ul>
5260
5261 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5262
5263 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5264
5265 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5266 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5267 year.</p>
5268
5269 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5270 run text tools. I use
5271 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5272 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5273 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5274 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5275 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5276 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5277 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5278 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5279 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5280 e-mail.</p>
5281
5282 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5283 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5284 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5285 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5286 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5287 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5288 Facebook now ;).</p>
5289
5290 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5291 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5292
5293 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5294 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5295
5296 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5297 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5298 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5299 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5300 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5301 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5302 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5303 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5304 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5305 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5306 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5307 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5308 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5309 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5310 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5311 plain criminal.</p>
5312
5313 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5314 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5315 founded an association named
5316 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5317 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5318 area of free and open source software, for example the
5319 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5320 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5321 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5322 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5323 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5324 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5325 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5326 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5327
5328 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5329 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5330 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5331 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5332 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5333 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5334 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5335 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5336 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5337 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5338 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5339 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5340
5341 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5342 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5343 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5344 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5345
5346 <!--
5347
5348 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5349
5350 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5351 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5352
5353  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5354    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5355    of the decision makers above;
5356  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5357    knowledge about free software
5358
5359 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5360
5361 -->
5362
5363       </div>
5364       <div class="tags">
5365
5366
5367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5368
5369
5370       </div>
5371     </div>
5372     <div class="padding"></div>
5373
5374     <div class="entry">
5375       <div class="title">
5376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5377       </div>
5378       <div class="date">
5379          6th December 2013
5380       </div>
5381       <div class="body">
5382         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5383 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5384 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5385 had a new school administrator show up on
5386 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5387 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5388 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5389 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5390 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5391
5392 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5393
5394 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5395 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5396 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5397 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5398
5399 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5400 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5401 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5402 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5403 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5404 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5405 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5406 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5407 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5408
5409 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5410 project?</strong></p>
5411
5412 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5413 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5414 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5415 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5416
5417 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5418 Edu?</strong></p>
5419
5420 <ul>
5421   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5422   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5423   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5424   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5425     single company,</li>
5426   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5427     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5428 </ul>
5429
5430 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5431 Edu?</strong></p>
5432
5433 <ul>
5434   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5435   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5436   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5437   working again reliably.
5438
5439   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5440   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5441   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5442   as their base.
5443
5444   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5445   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5446   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5447   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5448   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5449   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5450
5451   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5452   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5453   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5454   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5455   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5456   schemes.</li>
5457
5458   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5459   compared to Debian.</li>
5460
5461 </ul>
5462
5463 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5464 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5465 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5466 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5467
5468 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5469
5470 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5471 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5472 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5473 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5474
5475 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5476 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5477
5478 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5479
5480 <ul>
5481
5482   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5483     teaching and learning.</li>
5484
5485   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5486     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5487     conversion problems.</li>
5488
5489   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5490     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5491     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5492     science, not products.</li>
5493
5494   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5495     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5496
5497 </ul>
5498
5499       </div>
5500       <div class="tags">
5501
5502
5503         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5504
5505
5506       </div>
5507     </div>
5508     <div class="padding"></div>
5509
5510     <div class="entry">
5511       <div class="title">
5512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
5513       </div>
5514       <div class="date">
5515         30th November 2013
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="body">
5518         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5519 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5520 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5521 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5522 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5523 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5524 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5525 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5526 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5527 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5528 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5529 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5530 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5531 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5532 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5533 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5534 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5535 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5536 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5537 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5538
5539       </div>
5540       <div class="tags">
5541
5542
5543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5544
5545
5546       </div>
5547     </div>
5548     <div class="padding"></div>
5549
5550     <div class="entry">
5551       <div class="title">
5552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5553       </div>
5554       <div class="date">
5555         24th November 2013
5556       </div>
5557       <div class="body">
5558         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5559 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5560 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5561 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5562 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5563 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5564 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5565 is working on.  I checked the
5566 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5567 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5568 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5569 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5570 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5571 These are the release notes:</p>
5572
5573 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5574
5575 <ul>
5576
5577   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5578    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5579    up.</li>
5580
5581   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5582
5583   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5584    Matthias Klose.</li>
5585
5586   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5587    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5588
5589   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5590    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5591    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5592
5593 </ul>
5594
5595 <p>You can
5596 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5597 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5598 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5599 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5600 include a testsuite check.</p>
5601
5602       </div>
5603       <div class="tags">
5604
5605
5606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5607
5608
5609       </div>
5610     </div>
5611     <div class="padding"></div>
5612
5613     <div class="entry">
5614       <div class="title">
5615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
5616       </div>
5617       <div class="date">
5618         21st November 2013
5619       </div>
5620       <div class="body">
5621         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5622 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5623 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5624 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5625 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5626 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5627 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5628 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5629 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5630 TED talk
5631 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5632 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5633 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5634
5635 <blockquote>
5636
5637 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5638 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5639 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5640 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5641 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5642 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5643 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5644 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5645 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5646 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5647 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5648
5649 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5650 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5651 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5652
5653 </blockquote>
5654
5655 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5656 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5657 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5658 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5659 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5660 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5661 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5662 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5663 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5664
5665       </div>
5666       <div class="tags">
5667
5668
5669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5670
5671
5672       </div>
5673     </div>
5674     <div class="padding"></div>
5675
5676     <div class="entry">
5677       <div class="title">
5678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
5679       </div>
5680       <div class="date">
5681         13th November 2013
5682       </div>
5683       <div class="body">
5684         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5685 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5686 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5687 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5688 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5689 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5690 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5691 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5692 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5693 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5694 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5695 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5696 right away. :)</p>
5697
5698       </div>
5699       <div class="tags">
5700
5701
5702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5703
5704
5705       </div>
5706     </div>
5707     <div class="padding"></div>
5708
5709     <div class="entry">
5710       <div class="title">
5711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
5712       </div>
5713       <div class="date">
5714         10th November 2013
5715       </div>
5716       <div class="body">
5717         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5718 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5719 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5720 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5721 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5722
5723 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5724 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5725 and downloaded
5726 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5727 recommended firmware image</a>
5728 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5729 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5730 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5731 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5732 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5733
5734 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5735 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5736 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5737 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5738 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5739 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5740 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5741 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5742 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5743 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5744 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5745 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5746 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5747
5748 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5749 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5750 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5751 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5752 them:</p>
5753
5754 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5755
5756 <pre>
5757
5758 config interface 'loopback'
5759         option ifname 'lo'
5760         option proto 'static'
5761         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5762         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5763
5764 config globals 'globals'
5765         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5766
5767 config interface 'lan'
5768         option ifname 'eth0'
5769         option type 'bridge'
5770         option proto 'dhcp'
5771         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5772         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5773         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5774         option ip6assign '60'
5775
5776 config interface 'mesh'
5777         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5778         option mtu '1528'
5779         option proto 'batadv'
5780         option mesh 'bat0'
5781 </pre>
5782
5783 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5784 <pre>
5785
5786 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5787         option type 'mac80211'
5788         option channel '11'
5789         option hwmode '11ng'
5790         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5791         option htmode 'HT20'
5792         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5793         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5794         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5795         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5796         option disabled '0'
5797
5798 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5799         option device 'radio0'
5800         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5801         option network 'mesh'
5802         option encryption 'none'
5803         option mode 'adhoc'
5804         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5805         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5806 </pre>
5807 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5808 <pre>
5809
5810 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5811         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5812         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5813         option 'ap_isolation'
5814         option 'bonding'
5815         option 'fragmentation'
5816         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5817         option 'gw_mode'
5818         option 'gw_sel_class'
5819         option 'log_level'
5820         option 'orig_interval'
5821         option 'vis_mode'
5822         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5823         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5824         option 'network_coding'
5825         option 'hop_penalty'
5826
5827 # yet another batX instance
5828 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5829 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5830 </pre>
5831
5832 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5833 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5834 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5835
5836       </div>
5837       <div class="tags">
5838
5839
5840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5841
5842
5843       </div>
5844     </div>
5845     <div class="padding"></div>
5846
5847     <div class="entry">
5848       <div class="title">
5849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
5850       </div>
5851       <div class="date">
5852          2nd November 2013
5853       </div>
5854       <div class="body">
5855         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5856 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5857 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5858 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5859 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5860
5861 <p><pre>
5862 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5863 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5864 # Provides:          rsyslog
5865 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5866 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5867 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5868 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5869 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5870 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5871 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5872 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5873 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5874 ### END INIT INFO
5875 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5876 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5877 </pre></p>
5878
5879 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5880 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5881 info/comments.</p>
5882
5883 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5884 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5885
5886 <p><pre>
5887 #!/bin/sh
5888
5889 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5890 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5891 # and status_of_proc is working.
5892 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5893
5894 #
5895 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5896
5897 #
5898 do_start()
5899 {
5900         # Return
5901         #   0 if daemon has been started
5902         #   1 if daemon was already running
5903         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5904         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5905                 || return 1
5906         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5907                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5908                 || return 2
5909         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5910         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5911         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5912 }
5913
5914 #
5915 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5916 #
5917 do_stop()
5918 {
5919         # Return
5920         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5921         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5922         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5923         #   other if a failure occurred
5924         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5925         RETVAL="$?"
5926         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5927         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5928         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5929         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5930         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5931         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5932         # sleep for some time.
5933         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5934         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5935         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5936         rm -f $PIDFILE
5937         return "$RETVAL"
5938 }
5939
5940 #
5941 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5942 #
5943 do_reload() {
5944         #
5945         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5946         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5947         # then implement that here.
5948         #
5949         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5950         return 0
5951 }
5952
5953 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5954 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5955 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5956 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5957     script="$1"
5958     shift
5959     . $script
5960 else
5961     exit 0
5962 fi
5963
5964 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5965 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5966
5967 # Exit if the package is not installed
5968 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5969
5970 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5971 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5972
5973 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5974 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5975
5976 case "$1" in
5977   start)
5978         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5979         do_start
5980         case "$?" in
5981                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5982                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5983         esac
5984         ;;
5985   stop)
5986         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5987         do_stop
5988         case "$?" in
5989                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5990                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5991         esac
5992         ;;
5993   status)
5994         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5995         ;;
5996   #reload|force-reload)
5997         #
5998         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5999         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6000         #
6001         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6002         #do_reload
6003         #log_end_msg $?
6004         #;;
6005   restart|force-reload)
6006         #
6007         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6008         # 'force-reload' alias
6009         #
6010         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6011         do_stop
6012         case "$?" in
6013           0|1)
6014                 do_start
6015                 case "$?" in
6016                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6017                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6018                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6019                 esac
6020                 ;;
6021           *)
6022                 # Failed to stop
6023                 log_end_msg 1
6024                 ;;
6025         esac
6026         ;;
6027   *)
6028         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6029         exit 3
6030         ;;
6031 esac
6032
6033 :
6034 </pre></p>
6035
6036 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6037 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6038 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6039 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6040
6041 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6042 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6043 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6044 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6045 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6046
6047       </div>
6048       <div class="tags">
6049
6050
6051         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6052
6053
6054       </div>
6055     </div>
6056     <div class="padding"></div>
6057
6058     <div class="entry">
6059       <div class="title">
6060         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6061       </div>
6062       <div class="date">
6063          1st November 2013
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="body">
6066         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6067 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6068 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6069 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6070 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6071 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6072 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6073 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6074 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6075 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6076 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6077 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6078
6079 <p>The source is now available from
6080 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6081
6082       </div>
6083       <div class="tags">
6084
6085
6086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6087
6088
6089       </div>
6090     </div>
6091     <div class="padding"></div>
6092
6093     <div class="entry">
6094       <div class="title">
6095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6096       </div>
6097       <div class="date">
6098         27th October 2013
6099       </div>
6100       <div class="body">
6101         <p>The
6102 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6103 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6104 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6105 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6106 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6107 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6108 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6109 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6110 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6111 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6112 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6113 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6114
6115 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6116 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6117 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6118 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6119 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6121 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6122 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6123 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6124 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6125 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6126 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6127 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6128 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6129 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6130 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6131 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6132 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6133 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6134 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6135 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6136 available from
6137 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6138 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6139
6140 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6141 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6142 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6143 list:</p>
6144
6145 <p><pre>
6146 #!/bin/sh
6147 set -e # Exit on first error
6148 rootdir="$1"
6149 cd "$rootdir"
6150 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6151 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6152 EOF
6153 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6154 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6155 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6156     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6157 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6158 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6159 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6160 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6161 </pre></p>
6162
6163 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6164 to build the image:</p>
6165
6166 <pre>
6167 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6168     --variant minbase \
6169     --arch armel \
6170     --distribution jessie \
6171     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6172     --image test.img \
6173     --size 600M \
6174     --bootsize 64M \
6175     --boottype vfat \
6176     --log-level debug \
6177     --verbose \
6178     --no-kernel \
6179     --no-extlinux \
6180     --root-password raspberry \
6181     --hostname raspberrypi \
6182     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6183     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6184     --package netbase \
6185     --package git-core \
6186     --package binutils \
6187     --package ca-certificates \
6188     --package wget \
6189     --package kmod
6190 </pre></p>
6191
6192 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6193 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6194 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6195 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6196 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6197 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6198 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6199
6200 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6201 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6202 build dependency list.</p>
6203
6204 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6205 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6206 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6207 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6208
6209       </div>
6210       <div class="tags">
6211
6212
6213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
6214
6215
6216       </div>
6217     </div>
6218     <div class="padding"></div>
6219
6220     <div class="entry">
6221       <div class="title">
6222         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
6223       </div>
6224       <div class="date">
6225         21st October 2013
6226       </div>
6227       <div class="body">
6228         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6229 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6230 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6231 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6232 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6233 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6234 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6235 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6236
6237 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6238 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6239 instead, I started playing with a
6240 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6241 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6242 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6243 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6244 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6245 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6246 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6247 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6248 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6249 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6250 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6251 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6252 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6253 every client on the local network.</p>
6254
6255 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6256 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6257 and a script
6258 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6259 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6260 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6261 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6262 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6263 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6264 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6265 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6266 support.</p>
6267
6268 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6269 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6270
6271 <p><pre>
6272 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6273     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6274 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6275 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6276 %
6277 </pre></p>
6278
6279 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6280 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6281 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6282 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6283 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6284 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6285
6286 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6287 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6288 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6289
6290 <p><table>
6291
6292 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6293 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6294 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6295 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6296 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6297 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6298
6299 </table></p>
6300
6301 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6302 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6303 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6304 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6305 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6306 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6307 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6308
6309       </div>
6310       <div class="tags">
6311
6312
6313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6314
6315
6316       </div>
6317     </div>
6318     <div class="padding"></div>
6319
6320     <div class="entry">
6321       <div class="title">
6322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
6323       </div>
6324       <div class="date">
6325         19th October 2013
6326       </div>
6327       <div class="body">
6328         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6329 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6330 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6331 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6332 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6333 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6334 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6335 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6336
6337       </div>
6338       <div class="tags">
6339
6340
6341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
6342
6343
6344       </div>
6345     </div>
6346     <div class="padding"></div>
6347
6348     <div class="entry">
6349       <div class="title">
6350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6351       </div>
6352       <div class="date">
6353         15th October 2013
6354       </div>
6355       <div class="body">
6356         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6357 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6358 these. :)</p>
6359
6360 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6361 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6362 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6363 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6364 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6365 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6366 hope you will to. :)</p>
6367
6368 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6369 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6370 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6371 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6372 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6373
6374 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6375 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6376 statement under the heading
6377 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6378 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6379 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6380 too.</p>
6381
6382       </div>
6383       <div class="tags">
6384
6385
6386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6387
6388
6389       </div>
6390     </div>
6391     <div class="padding"></div>
6392
6393     <div class="entry">
6394       <div class="title">
6395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
6396       </div>
6397       <div class="date">
6398         11th October 2013
6399       </div>
6400       <div class="body">
6401         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6402 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6403 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6404 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6405 successful examples like
6406 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6407 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6408 (see
6409 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6410 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6411 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6412 can be seen from their
6413 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6414 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6415 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6416 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6417 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6418
6419 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6420 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6421 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6422 my recent involvement in
6423 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6424 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6425 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6426 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6427 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6428 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6429 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6430 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6431 important over the years.</p>
6432
6433 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6434 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6435 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6436 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6437 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6438 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6439 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6440 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6441 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6442 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6443 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6444 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6445 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6446 speakers about this talk (from
6447 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6448
6449 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6450
6451 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6452 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6453 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6454 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6455 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6456 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6457 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6458 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6459 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6460 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6461 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6462 that project (from
6463 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6464
6465 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6466
6467 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6468 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6469 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6470 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6471 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6472 based community mesh networks.</p>
6473
6474 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6475 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6476 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6477 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6478 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6479 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6480 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6481 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6482 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6483
6484 <p><table>
6485 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6486 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6487 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6488 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6489 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6490 </table></p>
6491
6492 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6493 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6494 VillageTelco about
6495 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6496 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6497 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6498 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6499 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6500 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6501
6502 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6503 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6504 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6505 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6506
6507 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6508 us on IRC, either channel
6509 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6510 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6511 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6512
6513 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6514 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6515 and Innovation called
6516 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6517 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6518 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6519 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6520 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6521 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6522 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6523 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6524
6525 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6526 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6527 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6528 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6529 mesh system.</p>
6530
6531       </div>
6532       <div class="tags">
6533
6534
6535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6536
6537
6538       </div>
6539     </div>
6540     <div class="padding"></div>
6541
6542     <div class="entry">
6543       <div class="title">
6544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
6545       </div>
6546       <div class="date">
6547          8th October 2013
6548       </div>
6549       <div class="body">
6550         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6551 Salvador had published a
6552 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6553 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6554 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6555 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6556 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6557 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6558 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6559 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6560 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6561 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6562 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6563 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6564 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6565 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6566 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6567
6568 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6569
6570 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6571
6572 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6573 me know. :)</p>
6574
6575       </div>
6576       <div class="tags">
6577
6578
6579         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6580
6581
6582       </div>
6583     </div>
6584     <div class="padding"></div>
6585
6586     <div class="entry">
6587       <div class="title">
6588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6589       </div>
6590       <div class="date">
6591         29th September 2013
6592       </div>
6593       <div class="body">
6594         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6595 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6596 complete announcement text can be found at
6597 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6598 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6599
6600 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6601 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6602 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6603 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6604
6605       </div>
6606       <div class="tags">
6607
6608
6609         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6610
6611
6612       </div>
6613     </div>
6614     <div class="padding"></div>
6615
6616     <div class="entry">
6617       <div class="title">
6618         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
6619       </div>
6620       <div class="date">
6621         27th September 2013
6622       </div>
6623       <div class="body">
6624         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6625 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6626 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6627 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6628
6629 <ul>
6630
6631 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6632 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6633
6634 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6635 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6636
6637 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6638 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6639 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6640 (Youtube)</li>
6641
6642 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6643 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6644
6645 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6646 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6647
6648 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6649 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6650 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6651
6652 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6653 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6654 (Youtube)</li>
6655
6656 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6657 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6658
6659 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6660 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6661
6662 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6663 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6664 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6665
6666 </ul>
6667
6668 <p>A larger list is available from
6669 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6670 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6671
6672 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6673 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6674 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6675 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6676 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6677 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6678 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6679 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6680 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6681 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6682 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6683
6684       </div>
6685       <div class="tags">
6686
6687
6688         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6689
6690
6691       </div>
6692     </div>
6693     <div class="padding"></div>
6694
6695     <div class="entry">
6696       <div class="title">
6697         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
6698       </div>
6699       <div class="date">
6700         16th September 2013
6701       </div>
6702       <div class="body">
6703         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6704 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6705
6706 <blockquote>
6707 <p>Hi,</p>
6708
6709 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6710 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6711 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6712
6713 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6714 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6715 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6716 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6717
6718 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6719 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6720
6721 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6722 compared to beta1:</p>
6723
6724 <ul>
6725
6726 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6727 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6728 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6729 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6730 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6731 main server.</li>
6732 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6733 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6734 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6735 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6736 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6737
6738 </ul>
6739
6740 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6741
6742 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6743
6744 <ul>
6745 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6746 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6747 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6748 </ul>
6749
6750 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6751
6752 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6753 <ul>
6754 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6755 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6756 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6757 </ul>
6758
6759 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6760
6761 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6762 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6763 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6764 as the other isos.</p>
6765
6766 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6767
6768 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6769 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6770
6771
6772 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6773
6774 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6775 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6776 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6777 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6778 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6779 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6780 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6781 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6782 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6783 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6784 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6785 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6786 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6787
6788 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6789 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6790 Squeeze release.</p>
6791
6792 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6793
6794 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6795 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6796 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6797 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6798 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6799 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6800 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6801 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6802 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6803 directory.</p>
6804
6805
6806 <p>cheers,
6807 <br>        Holger</p>
6808 </blockquote>
6809
6810       </div>
6811       <div class="tags">
6812
6813
6814         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6815
6816
6817       </div>
6818     </div>
6819     <div class="padding"></div>
6820
6821     <div class="entry">
6822       <div class="title">
6823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6824       </div>
6825       <div class="date">
6826         10th September 2013
6827       </div>
6828       <div class="body">
6829         <p>I was introduced to the
6830 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6831 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6832 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6833 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6834 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6835 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6836 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6837 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6838
6839 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6840 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6841 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6842 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6843 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6844
6845 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6846 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6847 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6848 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6849 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6850 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6851 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6852 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6853 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6854 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6855 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6856 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6857 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6858 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6859 missing in Debian).</p>
6860
6861 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6862 scripts
6863 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6864 and a administrative web interface
6865 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6866 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6867 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6868 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6869 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6870 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6871 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6872 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6873 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6874 this is really working yet, see
6875 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6876 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6877 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6878 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6879 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6880 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6881 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6882
6883 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6884 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6885 at.</p>
6886
6887 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6888
6889 <ol>
6890
6891 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6892 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6893 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6894 to the Debian installer:<p>
6895 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6896
6897 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6898 install on.</li>
6899
6900 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6901 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6902
6903 </ol>
6904
6905 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6906
6907 <ol>
6908
6909 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6910 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6911 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6912 <pre>
6913 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6914 </pre></li>
6915 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6916 <pre>
6917 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6918    apt-key add -
6919 apt-get update
6920 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6921 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6922 </pre></li>
6923 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6924
6925 </ol>
6926
6927 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6928 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6929 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6930 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6931 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6932
6933 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6934 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6935 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6936 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6937
6938 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6939 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6940 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6941 irc.debian.org and the
6942 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6943 mailing list</a>.</p>
6944
6945 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6946 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6947 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6948 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6949 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6950 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6951
6952       </div>
6953       <div class="tags">
6954
6955
6956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6957
6958
6959       </div>
6960     </div>
6961     <div class="padding"></div>
6962
6963     <div class="entry">
6964       <div class="title">
6965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6966       </div>
6967       <div class="date">
6968         22nd August 2013
6969       </div>
6970       <div class="body">
6971         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6972 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6973 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6974
6975 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6976
6977 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6978 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6979
6980 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6981
6982 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6983 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6984 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6985 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6986 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6987 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6988 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6989 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6990 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6991 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6992 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6993 desktop contains
6994 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6995 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6996 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6997 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6998
6999 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
7000 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
7001 release.</p>
7002
7003 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7004 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7005 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
7006 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
7007 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
7008 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
7009 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
7010 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
7011 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
7012 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
7013 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
7014
7015 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7016
7017 <ul>
7018
7019 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
7020     work also without a attached tty.</li>
7021 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
7022     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
7023     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
7024     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
7025     required).</li>
7026
7027 </ul>
7028
7029 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7030
7031 <ul>
7032
7033 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
7034 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
7035 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
7036 stick ISO image.</li>
7037 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
7038 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
7039 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
7040     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
7041     cope with this.</li>
7042 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
7043 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
7044     empty password hashes.</li>
7045 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
7046     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
7047     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
7048
7049 </ul>
7050
7051 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7052
7053 <ul>
7054
7055 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7056     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7057 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
7058     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
7059
7060 </ul>
7061
7062 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7063
7064 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7065
7066 <ul>
7067
7068 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7069
7070 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
7071
7072 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
7073
7074 </ul>
7075
7076 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
7077 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
7078
7079 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7080
7081 <ul>
7082
7083 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7084 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7085 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7086
7087 </ul>
7088
7089 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7090 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7091
7092
7093 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7094
7095 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7096
7097       </div>
7098       <div class="tags">
7099
7100
7101         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7102
7103
7104       </div>
7105     </div>
7106     <div class="padding"></div>
7107
7108     <div class="entry">
7109       <div class="title">
7110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7111       </div>
7112       <div class="date">
7113         18th August 2013
7114       </div>
7115       <div class="body">
7116         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7117 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7118 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7119 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7120 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7121 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7122 currently on the disk.</p>
7123
7124 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7125 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7126 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7127 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7128 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7129 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7130 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7131 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7132 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7133 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7134 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7135 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7136 the broken disks.</p>
7137
7138       </div>
7139       <div class="tags">
7140
7141
7142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7143
7144
7145       </div>
7146     </div>
7147     <div class="padding"></div>
7148
7149     <div class="entry">
7150       <div class="title">
7151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
7152       </div>
7153       <div class="date">
7154          2nd August 2013
7155       </div>
7156       <div class="body">
7157         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7158 have worked on a Norwegian
7159 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7160 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7161 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7162 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7163 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7164 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7165 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7166 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7167 progress of the translation:</p>
7168
7169 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7170
7171 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7172 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7173 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7174 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7175 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7176 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7177 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7178 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7179 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7180 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7181 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7182
7183 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7184 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7185 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7186 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7187 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7188 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7189 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7190 project files currently available from
7191 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7192
7193 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7194 the updated
7195 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7196 and
7197 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7198 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7199 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7200 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7201
7202       </div>
7203       <div class="tags">
7204
7205
7206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
7207
7208
7209       </div>
7210     </div>
7211     <div class="padding"></div>
7212
7213     <div class="entry">
7214       <div class="title">
7215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7216       </div>
7217       <div class="date">
7218         27th July 2013
7219       </div>
7220       <div class="body">
7221         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7222 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7223
7224 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7225 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7226
7227 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7228 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7229
7230 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7231
7232 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7233 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7234 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7235 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7236 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7237 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7238 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7239 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7240 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7241 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7242 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7243 desktop contains
7244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7245 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7246 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7247 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7248
7249 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7250 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7251 Squeeze release.</p>
7252
7253 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7254 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7255 release.</p>
7256
7257 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7258
7259 <ul>
7260
7261 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7262    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7263 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7264    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7265    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7266    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7267    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7268 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7269 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7270 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7271    crash bugs.</li>
7272
7273 </ul>
7274
7275 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7276
7277 <ul>
7278
7279 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7280    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7281 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7282    netinst CD.</li>
7283 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7284    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7285 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7286    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7287    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7288 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7289    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7290    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7291 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7292    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7293    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7294 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7295    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7296 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7297
7298 </ul>
7299
7300 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7301
7302 <ul>
7303
7304 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7305 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7306     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7307 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7308
7309 </ul>
7310
7311 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7312
7313 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7314
7315 <ul>
7316
7317 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7318
7319 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7320
7321 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7322
7323 </ul>
7324
7325 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7326 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7327
7328 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7329
7330 <ul>
7331
7332 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7333 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7334 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7335
7336 </ul>
7337
7338 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7339 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7340
7341
7342 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7343
7344 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7345
7346       </div>
7347       <div class="tags">
7348
7349
7350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7351
7352
7353       </div>
7354     </div>
7355     <div class="padding"></div>
7356
7357     <div class="entry">
7358       <div class="title">
7359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="date">
7362         17th July 2013
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="body">
7365         <p>Today I switched to
7366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7367 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7368 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7369 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7370 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7371 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7372 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7373 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7374 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7375 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7376 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7377 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7378 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7379 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7380 station from now on.</p>
7381
7382 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7383 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7384 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7385 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7386 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7387 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7388 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7389 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7390 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7391 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7392 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7393 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7394
7395 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7396 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7397 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7398 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7399 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7400 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7401 parameters are tuned:</p>
7402
7403 <ul>
7404
7405 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7406     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7407
7408 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7409     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7410     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7411
7412 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7413     systems.</li>
7414
7415 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7416     /etc/fstab.</li>
7417
7418 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7419
7420 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7421     cron.daily).</li>
7422
7423 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7424     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7425
7426 </ul>
7427
7428 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7429 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7430 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7431 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7432 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7433 from getting the data on the disk (see
7434 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7435 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7436 right thing to do.</p>
7437
7438 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7439 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7440 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7441
7442 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7443 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7444 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7445 instead of during my work.</p>
7446
7447 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7448 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7449
7450 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7451 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7452 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7453
7454 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7455 there.</p>
7456
7457 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7458 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7459 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7460 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7461 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7462 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7463 back.</p>
7464
7465       </div>
7466       <div class="tags">
7467
7468
7469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7470
7471
7472       </div>
7473     </div>
7474     <div class="padding"></div>
7475
7476     <div class="entry">
7477       <div class="title">
7478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7479       </div>
7480       <div class="date">
7481         10th July 2013
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="body">
7484         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7486 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7487 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7488 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7489 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7490 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7491 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7492
7493 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7494 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7495 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7496 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7497 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7498 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7499 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7500 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7501 lock up when I download a new
7502 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7503 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7504 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7505
7506 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7507 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7508 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7509 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7510 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7511 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7512
7513 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7514 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7515 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7516 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7517 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7518 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7519
7520 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7521 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7522 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7523 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7524 exist).</p>
7525
7526       </div>
7527       <div class="tags">
7528
7529
7530         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7531
7532
7533       </div>
7534     </div>
7535     <div class="padding"></div>
7536
7537     <div class="entry">
7538       <div class="title">
7539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7540       </div>
7541       <div class="date">
7542          9th July 2013
7543       </div>
7544       <div class="body">
7545         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7546 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7547 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7548 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7549 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7550 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7551 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7552
7553 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7554 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7555 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7556 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7557 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7558
7559       </div>
7560       <div class="tags">
7561
7562
7563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7564
7565
7566       </div>
7567     </div>
7568     <div class="padding"></div>
7569
7570     <div class="entry">
7571       <div class="title">
7572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7573       </div>
7574       <div class="date">
7575          5th July 2013
7576       </div>
7577       <div class="body">
7578         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7579 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7580 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7581 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7582 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7583 ended up picking a
7584 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7585 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7586 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7587 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7588 on that below.</p>
7589
7590 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7591 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7592 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7593 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7594 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7595 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7596 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7597 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7598 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7599
7600 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7601 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7602 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7603 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7604 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7605 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7606 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7607
7608 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7609 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7610
7611 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7612 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7613 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7614 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7615 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7616 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7617 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7618 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7619 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7620 kernel developers as
7621 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7622 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7623 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7624 Lenovo forums, both for
7625 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7626 2012-11-10</a> and for
7627 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7628 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7629 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7630 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7631 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7632 There is even a
7633 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7634 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7635 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7636
7637 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7638 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7639 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7640 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7641 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7642 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7643 fixed. :)</p>
7644
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="tags">
7647
7648
7649         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7650
7651
7652       </div>
7653     </div>
7654     <div class="padding"></div>
7655
7656     <div class="entry">
7657       <div class="title">
7658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7659       </div>
7660       <div class="date">
7661          4th July 2013
7662       </div>
7663       <div class="body">
7664         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7665 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7666 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7667 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7668 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7669 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7670 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7671 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7672 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7673
7674 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7675 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7676 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7677 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7678 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7679 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7680 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7681
7682 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7683 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7684 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7685 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7686 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7687 new laptop now. :)</p>
7688
7689 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7690
7691       </div>
7692       <div class="tags">
7693
7694
7695         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7696
7697
7698       </div>
7699     </div>
7700     <div class="padding"></div>
7701
7702     <div class="entry">
7703       <div class="title">
7704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7705       </div>
7706       <div class="date">
7707          3rd July 2013
7708       </div>
7709       <div class="body">
7710         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7711 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7712
7713 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7714 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7715
7716 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7717 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7718
7719 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7720
7721 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7722 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7723 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7724 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7725 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7726 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7727 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7728 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7729 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7730 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7731 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7732 desktop contains
7733 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7734 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7735 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7736 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7737
7738 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7739 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7740 Squeeze release.</p>
7741
7742 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7743 <ul>
7744   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7745   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7746     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7747     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7748   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7749     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7750     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7751   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7752     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7753     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7754     too.</li>
7755   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7756     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7757 </ul>
7758 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7759 <ul>
7760   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7761   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7762   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7763     up for some language options.</li>
7764   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7765   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7766   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7767     d-i is doing it.</li>
7768   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7769     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7770   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7771     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7772     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7773   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7774     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7775   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7776   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7777     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7778   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7779     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7780 </ul>
7781 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7782 <ul>
7783   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7784     available yet (698840).</li>
7785   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7786 </ul>
7787 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7788
7789 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7790 <ul>
7791   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7792   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7793   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7794 </ul>
7795
7796 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7797 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7798
7799 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7800 <ul>
7801   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7802   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7803   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7804 </ul>
7805
7806 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7807 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7808
7809 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7810
7811 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7812
7813       </div>
7814       <div class="tags">
7815
7816
7817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7818
7819
7820       </div>
7821     </div>
7822     <div class="padding"></div>
7823
7824     <div class="entry">
7825       <div class="title">
7826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="date">
7829         25th June 2013
7830       </div>
7831       <div class="body">
7832         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7833 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7834 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7835 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7836 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7837 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7838 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7839 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7840 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7841 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7842 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7843
7844 <p><pre>
7845 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7846 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7847 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7848 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7849 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7850 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7851 firmware-ipw2x00
7852 firmware-ipw2x00
7853 Preconfiguring packages ...
7854 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7855 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7856 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7857 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7858 #
7859 </pre></p>
7860
7861 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7862 printed instead:</p>
7863
7864 <p><pre>
7865 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7866 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7867 #
7868 </pre></p>
7869
7870 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7871 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7872
7873 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7874 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7875 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7876 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7877 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7878 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7879 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7880 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7881 machine.</p>
7882
7883 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7884 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7885 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7886 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7887 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7888 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7889
7890       </div>
7891       <div class="tags">
7892
7893
7894         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7895
7896
7897       </div>
7898     </div>
7899     <div class="padding"></div>
7900
7901     <div class="entry">
7902       <div class="title">
7903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
7904       </div>
7905       <div class="date">
7906         22nd June 2013
7907       </div>
7908       <div class="body">
7909         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7910 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7911 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7912 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7913 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7914 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7915 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7916 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7917 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7918
7919 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7920 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7921 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7922 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7923 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7924 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7925 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7926 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7927 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7928 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7929 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7930 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7931 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7932 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7933
7934 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7935 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7936 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7937 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7938 the problem.</p>
7939
7940 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7941 please join us on
7942 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7943 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7944 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7945 list.</p>
7946
7947       </div>
7948       <div class="tags">
7949
7950
7951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7952
7953
7954       </div>
7955     </div>
7956     <div class="padding"></div>
7957
7958     <div class="entry">
7959       <div class="title">
7960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7961       </div>
7962       <div class="date">
7963         17th June 2013
7964       </div>
7965       <div class="body">
7966         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7967 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7968 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7969 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7970 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7971 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7972 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7973 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7974
7975 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7976
7977 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7978 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7979 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7980 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7981 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7982 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7983 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7984 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7985 field.</p>
7986
7987 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7988 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7989 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7990 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7991 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7992 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7993
7994 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7995 project?</strong></p>
7996
7997 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7998 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7999 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
8000 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
8001 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
8002 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
8003 ways to contribute.</p>
8004
8005 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
8006 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
8007 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
8008 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
8009 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
8010 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
8011 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
8012 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
8013 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
8014 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
8015
8016 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8017 Edu?</strong></p>
8018
8019 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
8020 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
8021 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
8022 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
8023 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
8024 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
8025 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
8026 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
8027
8028 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
8029 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
8030 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
8031 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
8032 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
8033 project.</p>
8034
8035 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8036 Edu?</strong></p>
8037
8038 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
8039 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
8040 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
8041 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
8042 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
8043 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
8044 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
8045 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
8046 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
8047
8048 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
8049 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
8050 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
8051 on.</p>
8052
8053 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8054
8055 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
8056 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
8057 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
8058 Enlightenment project a lot!),
8059 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
8060 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
8061 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
8062 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
8063 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
8064
8065 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8066 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8067
8068 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
8069 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
8070 that:</p>
8071
8072 <ul>
8073
8074 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
8075
8076 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
8077     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
8078     of teenagers more?</li>
8079
8080 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
8081     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
8082     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
8083     them!)</li>
8084
8085 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8086     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8087     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8088
8089 </ul>
8090
8091 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8092 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8093 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8094 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8095 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8096
8097       </div>
8098       <div class="tags">
8099
8100
8101         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8102
8103
8104       </div>
8105     </div>
8106     <div class="padding"></div>
8107
8108     <div class="entry">
8109       <div class="title">
8110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8111       </div>
8112       <div class="date">
8113         12th June 2013
8114       </div>
8115       <div class="body">
8116         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8117 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8118 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8119 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8120 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8121 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8122
8123 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8124
8125 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8126 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8127 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8128
8129 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8130 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8131 each other.</p>
8132
8133 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8134 project?</strong></p>
8135
8136 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8137 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8138 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8139 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8140 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8141 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8142 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8143 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8144 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8145 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8146 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8147 we'll get there one day.</p>
8148
8149 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8150 Edu?</strong></p>
8151
8152 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8153 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8154 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8155 very high quality work.</p>
8156
8157 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8158 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8159 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8160 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8161 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8162
8163 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8164 Edu?</strong></p>
8165
8166 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8167 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8168 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8169
8170 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8171 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8172 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8173 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8174 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8175 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8176 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8177 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8178 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8179 currently.</p>
8180
8181 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8182 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8183 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8184 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8185 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8186 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8187 autonomous.</p>
8188
8189 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8190
8191 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8192 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8193 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8194 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8195 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8196
8197 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8198 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8199 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8200 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8201 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8202 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8203 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8204 X.</p>
8205
8206 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8207 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8208 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8209 it :p)
8210
8211 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8212 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8213
8214 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8215 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8216 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8217 that.</p>
8218
8219 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8220 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8221 advantage of that.</p>
8222
8223 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8224 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8225 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8226 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8227 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8228 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8229 best solution for them.</p>
8230
8231 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8232 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8233 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8234
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="tags">
8237
8238
8239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8240
8241
8242       </div>
8243     </div>
8244     <div class="padding"></div>
8245
8246     <div class="entry">
8247       <div class="title">
8248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
8249       </div>
8250       <div class="date">
8251         11th June 2013
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="body">
8254         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8255 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8256 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8257 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8258 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8259 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8260 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8261 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8262 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8263 i915 driver used by the
8264 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8265 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8266
8267 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8268 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8269 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8270 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8271 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8272
8273 <pre>
8274 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8275 update-initramfs -u -k all
8276 </pre>
8277
8278 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8279 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8280 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8281 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8282 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8283 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8284 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8285 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8286 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8287 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8288 number.</p>
8289
8290 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8291 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8292
8293 <p><pre>
8294 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8295     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8296     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8297  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8298  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8299     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8300  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8301     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8302  Latency: 0
8303  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8304  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8305  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8306  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8307  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8308  Capabilities: <access denied>
8309  Kernel driver in use: i915
8310 </pre></p>
8311
8312 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8313
8314 <p><pre>
8315 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8316        ...
8317         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8318         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8319        ...
8320 }
8321 </pre></p>
8322
8323 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8324 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8325 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8326 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8327 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8328 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8329 yet shown up in
8330 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8331 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8332 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8333 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8334 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8335 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8336
8337 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8338 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8339 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8340 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8341 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8342 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8343 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8344 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8345 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8346 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8347 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8348 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8349
8350 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8351 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8352 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8353 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8354 backlight.</p>
8355
8356       </div>
8357       <div class="tags">
8358
8359
8360         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8361
8362
8363       </div>
8364     </div>
8365     <div class="padding"></div>
8366
8367     <div class="entry">
8368       <div class="title">
8369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8370       </div>
8371       <div class="date">
8372         10th June 2013
8373       </div>
8374       <div class="body">
8375         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8376 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8377
8378 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8379 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8380
8381 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8382 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8383
8384 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8385
8386 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8387 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8388 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8389 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8390 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8391 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8392 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8393 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8394 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8395 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8396 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8397 desktop contains
8398 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8399 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8400 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8401 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8402
8403 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8404 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8405 Squeeze release.</p>
8406
8407 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8408
8409 <ul>
8410
8411 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8412 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
8413 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8414 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8415 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8416
8417 </ul>
8418
8419 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8420
8421 <ul>
8422
8423 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
8424 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8425 <li>New Romanian translation.
8426 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8427 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
8428 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8429 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8430 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8431 <li>More testsuite tests.
8432 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8433 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8434
8435 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8436 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8437
8438 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8439 them up with GOsa².</li>
8440
8441 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8442
8443 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8444 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8445 entered password). </li>
8446
8447 </ul>
8448
8449 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8450
8451 <ul>
8452
8453 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8454
8455 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8456 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8457 missing import feature).</li>
8458
8459 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8460
8461 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8462 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8463 unfixed.</li>
8464
8465 </ul>
8466
8467 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8468
8469 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8470
8471 <ul>
8472
8473 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8474
8475 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8476
8477 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8478
8479 </ul>
8480
8481 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8482 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8483
8484 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8485
8486 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8487
8488       </div>
8489       <div class="tags">
8490
8491
8492         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8493
8494
8495       </div>
8496     </div>
8497     <div class="padding"></div>
8498
8499     <div class="entry">
8500       <div class="title">
8501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
8502       </div>
8503       <div class="date">
8504          5th June 2013
8505       </div>
8506       <div class="body">
8507         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8508 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8509 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8510 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8511 the project:
8512
8513 <ol>
8514
8515 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8516   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8517   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8518   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8519   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8520
8521 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8522   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8523   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8524   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8525   #698840</a>.</li>
8526
8527 </ol>
8528
8529 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8530 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8531 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8532
8533       </div>
8534       <div class="tags">
8535
8536
8537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8538
8539
8540       </div>
8541     </div>
8542     <div class="padding"></div>
8543
8544     <div class="entry">
8545       <div class="title">
8546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8547       </div>
8548       <div class="date">
8549          4th June 2013
8550       </div>
8551       <div class="body">
8552         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8553 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8554 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8555 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8556 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8557 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8558
8559 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8560
8561 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8562 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8563 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8564 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8565
8566 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8567 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8568 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8569
8570 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8571 project?</strong></p>
8572
8573 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8574 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8575 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8576 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8577 manual.
8578
8579 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8580 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8581 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8582 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8583
8584 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8585 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8586 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8587 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8588 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8589 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8590 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8591 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8592 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8593 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8594
8595 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8596 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8597 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8598 beautiful project.</p>
8599
8600 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8601 Edu?</strong></p>
8602
8603 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8604 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8605 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8606
8607 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8608 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8609 of educational free software.</p>
8610
8611 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8612 Edu?</strong></p>
8613
8614 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8615 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8616 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8617 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8618 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8619
8620 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8621 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8622 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8623 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8624 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8625 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8626 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8627 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8628
8629 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8630
8631 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8632 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8633 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8634 also using the mathematical software
8635 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8636 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8637 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8638
8639 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8640 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8641 statistics?</strong></p>
8642
8643 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8644 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8645 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8646 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8647
8648 <ul>
8649
8650 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8651 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8652 constructions in planar geometry
8653
8654 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8655 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8656 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8657
8658 </ul>
8659
8660 <p>I like also
8661 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8662 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8663 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8664
8665 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8666 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8667
8668 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8669
8670 <ul>
8671
8672 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8673
8674 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8675     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8676     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8677
8678 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8679
8680 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8681     system.</li>
8682
8683 </ul>
8684
8685       </div>
8686       <div class="tags">
8687
8688
8689         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8690
8691
8692       </div>
8693     </div>
8694     <div class="padding"></div>
8695
8696     <div class="entry">
8697       <div class="title">
8698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
8699       </div>
8700       <div class="date">
8701          1st June 2013
8702       </div>
8703       <div class="body">
8704         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8705 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8706 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8707 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8708 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8709 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8710 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8711 program.</p>
8712
8713 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
8714
8715 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8716 <p>
8717 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
8718 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
8720 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
8721 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8722 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
8723 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
8724 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
8725 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
8726 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
8727 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
8728 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
8729 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
8730 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
8731 </p>
8732
8733 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8734 <p>
8735 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
8736 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
8737 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
8738 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
8739 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
8740 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8741 </p>
8742
8743 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8744 <p>
8745 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8746 </p>
8747
8748 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8749 <p>
8750 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
8751 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
8752 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
8753 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
8754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
8755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
8756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
8757 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
8758 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8759 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8760 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
8761 </p>
8762
8763 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8764 <p>
8765 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8766 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8767 </p>
8768
8769 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8770 <p>
8771 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
8772 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
8773 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8774 </p>
8775
8776 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8777 <p>
8778 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8779 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
8780 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
8781 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
8782 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
8783 </p>
8784
8785 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8786 <p>
8787 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8788 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
8789 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8790 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
8791 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8792 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
8793 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
8794 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
8795 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
8796 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
8797 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
8798 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
8799 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
8800 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
8801 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8802 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
8803 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
8804 </p>
8805
8806 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8807 <p>
8808 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8809 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
8810 </p>
8811
8812 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8813 <p>
8814 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
8815 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
8816 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8817 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8818 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
8819 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
8820 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
8821 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
8822 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
8823 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8824 </p>
8825
8826 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8827 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8828 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8829 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8830 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8831 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8832 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8833
8834       </div>
8835       <div class="tags">
8836
8837
8838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8839
8840
8841       </div>
8842     </div>
8843     <div class="padding"></div>
8844
8845     <div class="entry">
8846       <div class="title">
8847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
8848       </div>
8849       <div class="date">
8850         27th May 2013
8851       </div>
8852       <div class="body">
8853         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8854 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
8855 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8856 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8857 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8858 and Windows 8.</p>
8859
8860 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8861 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8862 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8863 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8864 enough to tell.</p>
8865
8866 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8867 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8868 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8869 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8870 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8871 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8872 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8873 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8874 to follow.</p>
8875
8876 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8877 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8878 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8879 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8880 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8881 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8882 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8883 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8884
8885 <p>I've updated the
8886 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8887 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8888 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8889 machine.</p>
8890
8891 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8892 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8893
8894       </div>
8895       <div class="tags">
8896
8897
8898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8899
8900
8901       </div>
8902     </div>
8903     <div class="padding"></div>
8904
8905     <div class="entry">
8906       <div class="title">
8907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8908       </div>
8909       <div class="date">
8910         25th May 2013
8911       </div>
8912       <div class="body">
8913         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8914 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8915 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8916 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8917 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8918 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8919
8920 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8921 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8922 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8923 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8924 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8925 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8926 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8927 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8928 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8929 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8930
8931 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8932 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8933 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8934 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8935 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8936 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8937
8938 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8939 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8940 on new Laptops?</p>
8941
8942       </div>
8943       <div class="tags">
8944
8945
8946         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8947
8948
8949       </div>
8950     </div>
8951     <div class="padding"></div>
8952
8953     <div class="entry">
8954       <div class="title">
8955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8956       </div>
8957       <div class="date">
8958         17th May 2013
8959       </div>
8960       <div class="body">
8961         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8962 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8963 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8964 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8965 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8966 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8967 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8968 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8969 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8970 donate some money</a>.
8971
8972 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8973 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8974 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8975 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8976 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8977
8978 <p>The script,
8979 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8980 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8981 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8982 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8983
8984 <ol>
8985
8986 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8987 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8988 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8989     our configuration.</li>
8990 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8991     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8992     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8993     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8994 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8995     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8996 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8997
8998 </ol>
8999
9000 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
9001 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
9002 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
9003 the needed packages.</p>
9004
9005 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
9006 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
9007 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
9008 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
9009 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
9010 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
9011
9012 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
9013 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
9014 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
9015
9016 <p><pre>
9017 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
9018 DESKTOP="lxde"
9019 </pre></p>
9020
9021 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
9022 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
9023 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
9024 boot.</p>
9025
9026       </div>
9027       <div class="tags">
9028
9029
9030         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9031
9032
9033       </div>
9034     </div>
9035     <div class="padding"></div>
9036
9037     <div class="entry">
9038       <div class="title">
9039         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9040       </div>
9041       <div class="date">
9042         14th May 2013
9043       </div>
9044       <div class="body">
9045         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9046 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
9047 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
9048
9049 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
9050 2013-05-14</strong></p>
9051
9052 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
9053 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
9054 codename "Wheezy".</p>
9055
9056 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9057
9058 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
9059 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
9060 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
9061 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
9062 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
9063 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
9064 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
9065 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
9066
9067 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9068 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9069 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9070
9071 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9072 <ul>
9073   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
9074     default.</li>
9075   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
9076   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
9077   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
9078     ibus-anthy.</li>
9079 </ul>
9080
9081 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9082 <ul>
9083
9084   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9085     reliability improvements.</li>
9086   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9087     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9088   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9089     problems.</li>
9090   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9091     direct:// URL.</li>
9092   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9093   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9094   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9095   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9096     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9097   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9098     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9099 </ul>
9100
9101 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9102 <ul>
9103
9104   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9105     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9106     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9107   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9108   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9109     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9110   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9111   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9112   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9113     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9114   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9115     password submission problem
9116     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9117
9118 </ul>
9119
9120 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9121
9122 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9123 <ul>
9124
9125   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9126   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9127   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
9128
9129 </ul>
9130
9131 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9132
9133 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9134
9135 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9136
9137 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9138
9139       </div>
9140       <div class="tags">
9141
9142
9143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9144
9145
9146       </div>
9147     </div>
9148     <div class="padding"></div>
9149
9150     <div class="entry">
9151       <div class="title">
9152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
9153       </div>
9154       <div class="date">
9155         11th May 2013
9156       </div>
9157       <div class="body">
9158         <P>In January,
9159 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9160 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9161 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9162 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9163 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9164 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9165 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9166 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9167 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9168 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9169 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9170 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9171
9172 <p><table>
9173 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
9174 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9175 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
9176 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9177 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9178 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9179 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
9180 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
9181 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
9182 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9183 </table></p>
9184
9185 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9186 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9187 available in experimental.</p>
9188
9189 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9190 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9191 for LEGO designers.</p>
9192
9193       </div>
9194       <div class="tags">
9195
9196
9197         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9198
9199
9200       </div>
9201     </div>
9202     <div class="padding"></div>
9203
9204     <div class="entry">
9205       <div class="title">
9206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
9207       </div>
9208       <div class="date">
9209          5th May 2013
9210       </div>
9211       <div class="body">
9212         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9213 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9214 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9215 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9216 soon.</p>
9217
9218 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9219 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9220 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9221 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9222 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9223 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9224 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9225 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9226 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9227 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9228 Edu.</a>
9229
9230 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9231 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9232 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9233 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9234 follow.<p>
9235
9236       </div>
9237       <div class="tags">
9238
9239
9240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9241
9242
9243       </div>
9244     </div>
9245     <div class="padding"></div>
9246
9247     <div class="entry">
9248       <div class="title">
9249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9250       </div>
9251       <div class="date">
9252         26th April 2013
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="body">
9255         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9256 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9257 announcement:</p>
9258
9259 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9260 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9261
9262 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9263 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9264
9265 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9266
9267 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9268 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9269 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9270 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9271 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9272 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9273 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9274 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9275 installed via the network.</p>
9276
9277 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9278 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9279 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9280
9281 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9282
9283 <ul>
9284 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9285   <ul>
9286      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9287      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9288          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9289          manual.)</li>
9290      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9291      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9292      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9293      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9294      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9295      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9296      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9297      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9298      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9299      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9300      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9301      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9302          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9303          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9304      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9305          installation.</li>
9306      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9307          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
9308   </ul></li>
9309 </ul>
9310
9311 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9312 <ul>
9313 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9314     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9315     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9316 </ul>
9317
9318 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9319 <ul>
9320 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9321     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9322     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9323 </ul>
9324
9325 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9326 <ul>
9327 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9328     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9329     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9330 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9331     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9332     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9333 </ul>
9334
9335 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9336 <ul>
9337 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9338     yet.</li>
9339 </ul>
9340
9341 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9342
9343 <ul>
9344 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9345     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9346     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9347 </ul>
9348
9349 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9350
9351 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9352 <ul>
9353 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9354 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9355 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9356 </ul>
9357
9358 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9359
9360 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9361
9362 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9363
9364 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9365
9366       </div>
9367       <div class="tags">
9368
9369
9370         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9371
9372
9373       </div>
9374     </div>
9375     <div class="padding"></div>
9376
9377     <div class="entry">
9378       <div class="title">
9379         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
9380       </div>
9381       <div class="date">
9382         16th April 2013
9383       </div>
9384       <div class="body">
9385         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9386 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9387 Details about the gathering can be found
9388 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9389 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9390 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9391 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9392 weekend.</p>
9393
9394 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9395 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9396 Edu release.</p>
9397
9398 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9399
9400       </div>
9401       <div class="tags">
9402
9403
9404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9405
9406
9407       </div>
9408     </div>
9409     <div class="padding"></div>
9410
9411     <div class="entry">
9412       <div class="title">
9413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
9414       </div>
9415       <div class="date">
9416          3rd April 2013
9417       </div>
9418       <div class="body">
9419         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9420 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9421 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9422 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9423
9424 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9425 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9426 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9427 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9428 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9429 BTS. :)</p>
9430
9431       </div>
9432       <div class="tags">
9433
9434
9435         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9436
9437
9438       </div>
9439     </div>
9440     <div class="padding"></div>
9441
9442     <div class="entry">
9443       <div class="title">
9444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
9445       </div>
9446       <div class="date">
9447         26th March 2013
9448       </div>
9449       <div class="body">
9450         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9451 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9452 font you use when printing.</p>
9453
9454 <p>Three years ago,
9455 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9456 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9457 changed their default front from
9458 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9459 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9460 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9461 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9462 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9463 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9464 prints.</p>
9465
9466 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9467 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9468 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9469 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9470 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9471 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9472 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9473 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9474 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9475 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9476 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9477
9478 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9479 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9480 and save some money in the process.</p>
9481
9482 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9483 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9484 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9485 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9486 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9487 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9488 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9489 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9490 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9491
9492       </div>
9493       <div class="tags">
9494
9495
9496         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9497
9498
9499       </div>
9500     </div>
9501     <div class="padding"></div>
9502
9503     <div class="entry">
9504       <div class="title">
9505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
9506       </div>
9507       <div class="date">
9508         24th March 2013
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="body">
9511         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9512 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9513 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9514 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9515 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9516 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9517 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9518 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9519 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9520 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9521 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9522 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9523
9524 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9525 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9526 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9527 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9528 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9529 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9530 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9531 all I had to do was to use the
9532 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9533 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9534 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9535 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9536 xsltproc/fop (aka
9537 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9538 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9539 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9540 technical detail.</p>
9541
9542 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9543 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9544 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9545 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9546 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9547 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9548
9549 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9550 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9551 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9552 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9553 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9554 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9555 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9556 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9557 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9558
9559 <p><blockquote><pre>
9560 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9561 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9562   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9563     &lt;hr/&gt;
9564   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9565 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9566 </pre></blockquote></p>
9567
9568 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9569
9570 <p><blockquote><pre>
9571 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9572 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9573   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9574     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9575       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9576     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9577   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9578 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9579 </pre></blockquote></p>
9580
9581 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9582 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9583 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9584 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9585 enough.</p>
9586
9587 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9588 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9589 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9590 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9591 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9592 look like this:</p>
9593
9594 <p><blockquote><pre>
9595 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9596 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9597   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9598     &lt;br/&gt;
9599   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9600 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9601 </pre></blockquote></p>
9602
9603 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9604
9605 <p><blockquote><pre>
9606 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9607 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9608   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9609   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9610     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9611   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9612 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9613 </pre></blockquote></p>
9614
9615 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9616 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9617 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9618 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9619 page.</p>
9620
9621 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9622 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9623 github</a>
9624 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9625 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9626 days.</p>
9627
9628       </div>
9629       <div class="tags">
9630
9631
9632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9633
9634
9635       </div>
9636     </div>
9637     <div class="padding"></div>
9638
9639     <div class="entry">
9640       <div class="title">
9641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
9642       </div>
9643       <div class="date">
9644         17th March 2013
9645       </div>
9646       <div class="body">
9647         <p>Via
9648 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9649 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9650 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9651 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9652 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9653 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9654 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9655
9656 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9657 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9658
9659 <blockquote>
9660 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9661 </blockquote>
9662
9663 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9664
9665 <blockquote>
9666 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9667 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9668 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9669 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9670 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9671 </blockquote>
9672
9673 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9674 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9675 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9676 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9677
9678 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9679 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9680
9681 <blockquote>
9682 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9683 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9684 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9685 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9686 </blockquote>
9687
9688 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9689 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9690 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9691 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9692 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9693
9694 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9695 embedding:</p>
9696
9697 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9698
9699       </div>
9700       <div class="tags">
9701
9702
9703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9704
9705
9706       </div>
9707     </div>
9708     <div class="padding"></div>
9709
9710     <div class="entry">
9711       <div class="title">
9712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9713       </div>
9714       <div class="date">
9715          8th March 2013
9716       </div>
9717       <div class="body">
9718         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9719 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9720 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9721 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9722 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9723 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9724 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9725
9726 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9727
9728 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9729 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9730
9731 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9732 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9733 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9734 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9735 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9736 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9737
9738 <p>Images are available for download at
9739 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9740
9741 <p>md5sums:
9742 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9743 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9744 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9745
9746 <p>sha1sums:
9747 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9748 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9749 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9750
9751 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9752
9753 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9754 2013-03-03:</p>
9755
9756 <ul>
9757   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9758   <ul>
9759         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9760         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9761   </ul></li>
9762   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9763   <ul>
9764         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9765         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9766   </ul></li>
9767   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9768      <ul>
9769         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9770         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9771         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9772                 Closes: #664596</li>
9773         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9774                 Closes: #664976</li>
9775         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9776            <ul>
9777                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9778                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9779            </ul></li>
9780         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9781            <ul>
9782                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9783                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9784                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9785                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9786                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9787            </ul></li>
9788         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9789     </ul>
9790   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9791     <ul>
9792         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9793     </ul></li>
9794 </ul>
9795
9796 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9797 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9798 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9799 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9800
9801 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9802 mailinglist
9803 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9804 </p></blockquote>
9805
9806 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9807
9808       </div>
9809       <div class="tags">
9810
9811
9812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9813
9814
9815       </div>
9816     </div>
9817     <div class="padding"></div>
9818
9819     <div class="entry">
9820       <div class="title">
9821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
9822       </div>
9823       <div class="date">
9824          3rd March 2013
9825       </div>
9826       <div class="body">
9827         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9828 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9829 support using
9830 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9831 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9832 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9833 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9834 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9835 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9836 using the GNU LGPL, and
9837 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9838
9839 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9840 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9841 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9842 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9843 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9844 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9845
9846 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9847 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9848 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9849 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9850 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9851 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9852 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9853 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9854 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9855 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9856 signal distribution is handled using
9857 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9858 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9859 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9860 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9861 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9862 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9863 them up a bit more first.</p>
9864
9865 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9866 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9867 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9868 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9869 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9870 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9871 development.</p>
9872
9873       </div>
9874       <div class="tags">
9875
9876
9877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9878
9879
9880       </div>
9881     </div>
9882     <div class="padding"></div>
9883
9884     <div class="entry">
9885       <div class="title">
9886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
9887       </div>
9888       <div class="date">
9889         27th February 2013
9890       </div>
9891       <div class="body">
9892         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9893 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9894 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9895 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9896 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9897 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9898 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9899 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9900 GNU», with this description:
9901
9902 <p><blockquote>
9903 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9904 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9905 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9906 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9907 </blockquote></p>
9908
9909 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9910 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9911 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9912 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9913 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9914
9915       </div>
9916       <div class="tags">
9917
9918
9919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9920
9921
9922       </div>
9923     </div>
9924     <div class="padding"></div>
9925
9926     <div class="entry">
9927       <div class="title">
9928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
9929       </div>
9930       <div class="date">
9931         15th February 2013
9932       </div>
9933       <div class="body">
9934         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9935 now a great source of free maps available from
9936 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9937 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9938 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9939 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9940 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9941 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9942 page for descriptions).</p>
9943
9944 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9945 map you can just edit the
9946 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9947 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9948
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="tags">
9951
9952
9953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
9954
9955
9956       </div>
9957     </div>
9958     <div class="padding"></div>
9959
9960     <div class="entry">
9961       <div class="title">
9962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
9963       </div>
9964       <div class="date">
9965         12th February 2013
9966       </div>
9967       <div class="body">
9968         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9969 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9970 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9971 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9972 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9973 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9974 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9975 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9976 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9977 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9978 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9979 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9980 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9981 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9982 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9983 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9984
9985 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9986 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9987 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9988 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9989 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9990 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9991 fields:</p>
9992
9993 <p><pre>
9994 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9995 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9996 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9997 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9998 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9999 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10000 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10001 </pre></p>
10002
10003 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
10004 answer regarding
10005 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
10006 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
10007 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
10008 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
10009
10010 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
10011
10012 <p><pre>
10013 BEGIN:VCARD
10014 VERSION:2.1
10015 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
10016 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
10017 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
10018 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
10019 REV:20130212T095000Z
10020 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
10021 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
10022 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
10023 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
10024 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
10025 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
10026 END:VCARD
10027 </pre></p>
10028
10029 <p>The resulting QR code created using
10030 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
10031 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
10032 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
10033 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
10034 system.</p>
10035
10036 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
10037
10038 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
10039 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
10040 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
10041 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
10042
10043 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
10044 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
10045
10046       </div>
10047       <div class="tags">
10048
10049
10050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10051
10052
10053       </div>
10054     </div>
10055     <div class="padding"></div>
10056
10057     <div class="entry">
10058       <div class="title">
10059         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
10060       </div>
10061       <div class="date">
10062         10th February 2013
10063       </div>
10064       <div class="body">
10065         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
10066
10067 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
10068 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
10069 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
10070 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
10071 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
10072 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
10073 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
10074 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
10075 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
10076 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
10077 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
10078
10079 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
10080 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
10081 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
10082 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
10083 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10084 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10085 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10086 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10087 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10088 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10089 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10090 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10091 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10092 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10093 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10094 ones own
10095 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10096 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10097 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10098 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10099 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10100 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10101 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10102 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10103 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10104 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10105 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10106
10107 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10108 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10109 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10110 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10111 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10112 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10113
10114 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10115 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10116 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10117
10118       </div>
10119       <div class="tags">
10120
10121
10122         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10123
10124
10125       </div>
10126     </div>
10127     <div class="padding"></div>
10128
10129     <div class="entry">
10130       <div class="title">
10131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
10132       </div>
10133       <div class="date">
10134          2nd February 2013
10135       </div>
10136       <div class="body">
10137         <p>My
10138 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10139 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10140 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10141 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10142 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10143 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10144 version too.</p>
10145
10146 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10147 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10148 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10149 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10150 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10151 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10152 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10153 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10154
10155 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10156 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10157 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10158 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10159 it. :)</p>
10160
10161 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10162 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10163 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10164
10165       </div>
10166       <div class="tags">
10167
10168
10169         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10170
10171
10172       </div>
10173     </div>
10174     <div class="padding"></div>
10175
10176     <div class="entry">
10177       <div class="title">
10178         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10179       </div>
10180       <div class="date">
10181         22nd January 2013
10182       </div>
10183       <div class="body">
10184         <p>Yesterday, I
10185 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10186 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10187 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10188 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10189 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10190 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10191 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10192 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10193 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10194 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10195 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10196 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10197 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10198
10199 <pre>
10200 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10201 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10202 </pre>
10203
10204 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10205 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10206 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10207 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10208
10209 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10210 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10211 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10212 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10213 word.</p>
10214
10215 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10216 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10217 process.</p>
10218
10219 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10220 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10221
10222       </div>
10223       <div class="tags">
10224
10225
10226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10227
10228
10229       </div>
10230     </div>
10231     <div class="padding"></div>
10232
10233     <div class="entry">
10234       <div class="title">
10235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
10236       </div>
10237       <div class="date">
10238         21st January 2013
10239       </div>
10240       <div class="body">
10241         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10242 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10243 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10244 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10245 it, fetch the
10246 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10247 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10248 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10249 autostart script.</p>
10250
10251 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10252
10253 <ul>
10254
10255 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10256 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10257
10258 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10259 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10260 initially did.</li>
10261
10262 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10263 the APT database, a database
10264 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10265 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10266
10267 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10268 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10269 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10270 package or packages.</li>
10271
10272 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10273 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10274
10275 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10276 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10277
10278 </ul>
10279
10280 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10281 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10282 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10283 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10284
10285 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10286 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10287 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10288 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10289 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10290
10291 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10292 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10293 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10294 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10295 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10296 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10297 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10298 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10299
10300 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10301 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10302 '<tt>svn checkout
10303 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10304 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10305 devscripts package.</p>
10306
10307 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10308 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10309 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10310 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10311 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10312
10313       </div>
10314       <div class="tags">
10315
10316
10317         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10318
10319
10320       </div>
10321     </div>
10322     <div class="padding"></div>
10323
10324     <div class="entry">
10325       <div class="title">
10326         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
10327       </div>
10328       <div class="date">
10329         19th January 2013
10330       </div>
10331       <div class="body">
10332         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10333 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10334 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10335 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10336 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10337 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10338 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10339 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10340 not a durable solution.
10341
10342 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10343 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10344
10345 <ul>
10346
10347 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10348   than A4).</li>
10349 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10350 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10351 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10352 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10353 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10354 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10355 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10356 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10357 size).</li>
10358 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10359   X.org packages.</li>
10360 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10361   the time).
10362
10363 </ul>
10364
10365 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10366 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10367 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10368 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10369 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10370 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10371 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10372 still be useful.</p>
10373
10374 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10375 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10376 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10377 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10378 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10379 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10380
10381       </div>
10382       <div class="tags">
10383
10384
10385         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10386
10387
10388       </div>
10389     </div>
10390     <div class="padding"></div>
10391
10392     <div class="entry">
10393       <div class="title">
10394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
10395       </div>
10396       <div class="date">
10397         18th January 2013
10398       </div>
10399       <div class="body">
10400         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10401 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10402 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10403 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10404 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10405 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10406 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10407
10408 <pre>
10409 #!/usr/bin/python
10410 import sys
10411 import apt
10412 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10413     cache = apt.Cache()
10414     cache.open(None)
10415     thepkgs = []
10416     for pkg in cache:
10417         version = pkg.candidate
10418         if version is None:
10419             version = pkg.installed
10420         if version is None:
10421             continue
10422         record = version.record
10423         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10424             continue
10425         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10426         for t in mime_types:
10427             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10428             if t == mimetype:
10429                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10430     return thepkgs
10431 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10432 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10433     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10434 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10435 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10436     print "  %s" %pkg
10437 </pre>
10438
10439 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10440
10441 <pre>
10442 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10443 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10444   gecko-mediaplayer
10445 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10446 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10447   browser-plugin-gnash
10448 %
10449 </pre>
10450
10451 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10452 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10453 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10454 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10455
10456 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10457 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10458 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10459 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10460 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10461 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10462
10463       </div>
10464       <div class="tags">
10465
10466
10467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10468
10469
10470       </div>
10471     </div>
10472     <div class="padding"></div>
10473
10474     <div class="entry">
10475       <div class="title">
10476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
10477       </div>
10478       <div class="date">
10479         16th January 2013
10480       </div>
10481       <div class="body">
10482         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10483 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10484 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10485 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10486 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10487 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10488 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10489 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10490
10491 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10492 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10493 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10494 can be found on the
10495 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10496 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10497 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10498 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10499 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10500
10501 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10502
10503 <pre>
10504   count MIME type
10505   ----- -----------------------
10506      32 text/plain
10507      30 audio/mpeg
10508      29 image/png
10509      28 image/jpeg
10510      27 application/ogg
10511      26 audio/x-mp3
10512      25 image/tiff
10513      25 image/gif
10514      22 image/bmp
10515      22 audio/x-wav
10516      20 audio/x-flac
10517      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10518      18 video/x-ms-asf
10519      18 audio/x-musepack
10520      18 audio/x-mpeg
10521      18 application/x-ogg
10522      17 video/mpeg
10523      17 audio/x-scpls
10524      17 audio/ogg
10525      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10526 </pre>
10527
10528 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10529
10530 <pre>
10531   count MIME type
10532   ----- -----------------------
10533      33 text/plain
10534      32 image/png
10535      32 image/jpeg
10536      29 audio/mpeg
10537      27 image/gif
10538      26 image/tiff
10539      26 application/ogg
10540      25 audio/x-mp3
10541      22 image/bmp
10542      21 audio/x-wav
10543      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10544      19 audio/x-mpeg
10545      18 video/mpeg
10546      18 audio/x-scpls
10547      18 audio/x-flac
10548      18 application/x-ogg
10549      17 video/x-ms-asf
10550      17 text/html
10551      17 audio/x-musepack
10552      16 image/x-xbitmap
10553 </pre>
10554
10555 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10556
10557 <pre>
10558   count MIME type
10559   ----- -----------------------
10560      31 text/plain
10561      31 image/png
10562      31 image/jpeg
10563      29 audio/mpeg
10564      28 application/ogg
10565      27 image/gif
10566      26 image/tiff
10567      26 audio/x-mp3
10568      23 audio/x-wav
10569      22 image/bmp
10570      21 audio/x-flac
10571      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10572      19 audio/x-mpeg
10573      18 video/x-ms-asf
10574      18 video/mpeg
10575      18 audio/x-scpls
10576      18 application/x-ogg
10577      17 audio/x-musepack
10578      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10579      16 video/x-msvideo
10580 </pre>
10581
10582 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10583 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10584 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10585 issues.</p>
10586
10587 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10588 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10589
10590       </div>
10591       <div class="tags">
10592
10593
10594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10595
10596
10597       </div>
10598     </div>
10599     <div class="padding"></div>
10600
10601     <div class="entry">
10602       <div class="title">
10603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
10604       </div>
10605       <div class="date">
10606         15th January 2013
10607       </div>
10608       <div class="body">
10609         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10610 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10611 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10612 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10613 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10614 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10615 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10616 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10617 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10618 packages.</p>
10619
10620 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10621 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10622 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10623 modalias.</p>
10624
10625 <p><blockquote>
10626 Package: package-name
10627 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10628 </blockquote></p>
10629
10630 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10631 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10632
10633 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10634 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10635
10636 <p><blockquote>
10637 Package: cheese
10638 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10639 </blockquote></p>
10640
10641 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10642 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10643
10644 <p><blockquote>
10645 Package: pcmciautils
10646 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10647 </blockquote></p>
10648
10649 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10650 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10651
10652 <p><blockquote>
10653 Package: colorhug-client
10654 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10655 </blockquote></p>
10656
10657 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10658 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10659 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10660
10661 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10662 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10663 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10664 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10665 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10666 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10667 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10668 Raring.</p>
10669
10670 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10671 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10672 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10673 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10674 try the
10675 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10676 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10677 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10678 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10679
10680 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10681 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10682
10683 <p><blockquote>
10684 % ./hw-support-lookup
10685 <br>yubikey-personalization
10686 <br>%
10687 </blockquote></p>
10688
10689 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10690 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10691
10692 <p><blockquote>
10693 % ./hw-support-lookup
10694 <br>pcmciautils
10695 <br>%
10696 </blockquote></p>
10697
10698 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10699 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10700 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10701
10702 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10703 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10704 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10705 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10706 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10707 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10708 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10709 see if it work.</p>
10710
10711 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10712 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10713 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10714 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10715
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="tags">
10718
10719
10720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10721
10722
10723       </div>
10724     </div>
10725     <div class="padding"></div>
10726
10727     <div class="entry">
10728       <div class="title">
10729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
10730       </div>
10731       <div class="date">
10732         14th January 2013
10733       </div>
10734       <div class="body">
10735         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10736 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10737 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10738 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10739 in
10740 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10741 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10742
10743 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10744
10745 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10746 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10747 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10748 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
10749 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
10750 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
10751
10752 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10753 this shell script:</p>
10754
10755 <pre>
10756 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10757 </pre>
10758
10759 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10760 using modinfo:</p>
10761
10762 <pre>
10763 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10764 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10765 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10766 %
10767 </pre>
10768
10769 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10770
10771 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10772 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10773
10774 <p><blockquote>
10775 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10776 </blockquote></p>
10777
10778 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10779
10780 <pre>
10781  v   00008086  (vendor)
10782  d   00002770  (device)
10783  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10784  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10785  bc  06        (bus class)
10786  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10787  i   00        (interface)
10788 </pre>
10789
10790 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10791 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10792 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10793 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10794
10795 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10796 means.</p>
10797
10798 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10799
10800 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10801 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10802
10803 <p><blockquote>
10804 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10805 </blockquote></p>
10806
10807 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10808
10809 <pre>
10810  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10811  p    0001  (device product)
10812  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10813  dc     09  (device class)
10814  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10815  dp     00  (device protocol)
10816  ic     09  (interface class)
10817  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10818  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10819 </pre>
10820
10821 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10822 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10823 these alias entries show up:</p>
10824
10825 <p><blockquote>
10826 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10827 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10828 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10829 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10830 </blockquote></p>
10831
10832 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10833 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10834 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10835
10836 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10837
10838 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10839 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10840
10841 <p><blockquote>
10842 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10843 </blockquote></p>
10844
10845 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10846
10847 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10848
10849 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10850 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10851 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10852
10853 <p><blockquote>
10854 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10855 </blockquote></p>
10856
10857 <p>The values present are</p>
10858
10859 <pre>
10860  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10861  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10862  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10863  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10864  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10865  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10866  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10867  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10868  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10869  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10870  ct   10             (chassis type)
10871  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10872 </pre>
10873
10874 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10875 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10876
10877 <pre>
10878   3 Desktop
10879   4 Low Profile Desktop
10880   5 Pizza Box
10881   6 Mini Tower
10882   7 Tower
10883   8 Portable
10884   9 Laptop
10885  10 Notebook
10886  11 Hand Held
10887  12 Docking Station
10888  13 All In One
10889  14 Sub Notebook
10890  15 Space-saving
10891  16 Lunch Box
10892  17 Main Server Chassis
10893  18 Expansion Chassis
10894  19 Sub Chassis
10895  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10896  21 Peripheral Chassis
10897  22 RAID Chassis
10898  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10899  24 Sealed-case PC
10900  25 Multi-system
10901  26 CompactPCI
10902  27 AdvancedTCA
10903  28 Blade
10904  29 Blade Enclosing
10905 </pre>
10906
10907 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10908 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10909 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10910
10911 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10912
10913 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10914 test machine:</p>
10915
10916 <p><blockquote>
10917 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10918 </blockquote></p>
10919
10920 <p>The values present are</p>
10921
10922 <pre>
10923   ty  01  (type)
10924   pr  00  (prototype)
10925   id  00  (id)
10926   ex  00  (extra)
10927 </pre>
10928
10929 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10930 the valid values are.</p>
10931
10932 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10933
10934 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10935 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10936 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10937 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10938 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10939 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10940 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10941
10942 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10943
10944 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10945 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10946
10947 <pre>
10948   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10949     echo "$id" ; \
10950     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10951   done
10952 </pre>
10953
10954 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10955 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10956
10957 <pre>
10958   acpi:ACPI0003:
10959     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10960   acpi:device:
10961   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10962   acpi:IBM0068:
10963     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10964     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10965     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10966     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10967   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10968     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10969     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10970     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10971   [...]
10972 </pre>
10973
10974 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10975 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10976 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10977 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10978
10979 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10980 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10981 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10982
10983       </div>
10984       <div class="tags">
10985
10986
10987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10988
10989
10990       </div>
10991     </div>
10992     <div class="padding"></div>
10993
10994     <div class="entry">
10995       <div class="title">
10996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
10997       </div>
10998       <div class="date">
10999         10th January 2013
11000       </div>
11001       <div class="body">
11002         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
11003 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
11004 Launcher and updated the Debian package
11005 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
11006 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
11007 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
11008 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
11009 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
11010 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
11011 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
11012 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
11013 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
11014 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
11015 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
11016 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
11017 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
11018 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
11019 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
11020
11021       </div>
11022       <div class="tags">
11023
11024
11025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11026
11027
11028       </div>
11029     </div>
11030     <div class="padding"></div>
11031
11032     <div class="entry">
11033       <div class="title">
11034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
11035       </div>
11036       <div class="date">
11037          9th January 2013
11038       </div>
11039       <div class="body">
11040         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
11041 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
11042 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
11043 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
11044 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
11045 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
11046 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
11047 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
11048 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
11049 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
11050 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
11051
11052 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
11053 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
11054 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
11055 simple:
11056
11057 <ul>
11058
11059 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
11060   starting when a user log in.</li>
11061
11062 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
11063   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
11064
11065 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
11066   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
11067   packages.</li>
11068
11069 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
11070   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
11071
11072 </ul>
11073
11074 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
11075 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11076 discover database to find packages and
11077 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11078 packages.</p>
11079
11080 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11081 draft package is now checked into
11082 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11083 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11084 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11085 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11086 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11087 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11088 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11089 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11090 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11091 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11092 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11093 because of the freeze).</p>
11094
11095 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11096 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11097 inserted):</p>
11098
11099 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11100
11101 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11102 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11103 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11104
11105 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11106 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11107 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11108 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11109 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11110 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11111 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11112
11113 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11114 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11115 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11116 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11117 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11118 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11119 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11120 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11121 not be installed?</p>
11122
11123 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11124 please send me an email. :)</p>
11125
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="tags">
11128
11129
11130         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11131
11132
11133       </div>
11134     </div>
11135     <div class="padding"></div>
11136
11137     <div class="entry">
11138       <div class="title">
11139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
11140       </div>
11141       <div class="date">
11142          2nd January 2013
11143       </div>
11144       <div class="body">
11145         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11146 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11147 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11148 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11149 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11150 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11151 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11152 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11153 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11154 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11155
11156 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11157 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11158 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11159
11160       </div>
11161       <div class="tags">
11162
11163
11164         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
11165
11166
11167       </div>
11168     </div>
11169     <div class="padding"></div>
11170
11171     <div class="entry">
11172       <div class="title">
11173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11174       </div>
11175       <div class="date">
11176         28th December 2012
11177       </div>
11178       <div class="body">
11179         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11180 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11181 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11182 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11183 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11184 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11185 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11186 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11187 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11188 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11189 followed by many others. :)</p>
11190
11191 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11192 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11193 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11194 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11195
11196       </div>
11197       <div class="tags">
11198
11199
11200         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11201
11202
11203       </div>
11204     </div>
11205     <div class="padding"></div>
11206
11207     <div class="entry">
11208       <div class="title">
11209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
11210       </div>
11211       <div class="date">
11212         25th December 2012
11213       </div>
11214       <div class="body">
11215         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11216 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11217
11218 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11219 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11220 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11221 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11222 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11223 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11224 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11225 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11226 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11227 name.</p>
11228
11229 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11230 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11231 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11232
11233 <blockquote><pre>
11234 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11235 cd bitcoin
11236 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11237 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11238 </pre></blockquote>
11239
11240 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11241 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11242 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11243 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11244 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11245 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11246 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11247 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11248 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11249
11250 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11251 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11252 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11253
11254       </div>
11255       <div class="tags">
11256
11257
11258         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11259
11260
11261       </div>
11262     </div>
11263     <div class="padding"></div>
11264
11265     <div class="entry">
11266       <div class="title">
11267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11268       </div>
11269       <div class="date">
11270         21st December 2012
11271       </div>
11272       <div class="body">
11273         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11274 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11275 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11276 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11277 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11278 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11279 is now maintained by a
11280 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11281 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11282 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11283 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11284 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11285 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11286 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11287 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11288 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11289 Corallo in a
11290 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11291 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11292 Debian package.</p>
11293
11294 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11295 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11296 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11297 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11298 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11299 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11300 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11301 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11302 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11303 new version to unstable.
11304
11305 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11306 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11307 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11308 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11309 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11310 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11311 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11312 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11313 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11314 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11315 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11316 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11317 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11318 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11319 have not tested them.</p>
11320
11321 <p>My
11322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11323 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11324 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11325 years ago, as can be
11326 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11327 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11328 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11329 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11330 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11331 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11332 the same address as last time,
11333 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11334
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="tags">
11337
11338
11339         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11340
11341
11342       </div>
11343     </div>
11344     <div class="padding"></div>
11345
11346     <div class="entry">
11347       <div class="title">
11348         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
11349       </div>
11350       <div class="date">
11351         18th December 2012
11352       </div>
11353       <div class="body">
11354         <p>A few days ago I came across
11355 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11356 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11357 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11358 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11359 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11360 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11361 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11362 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11363 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11364
11365 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11366 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11367 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11368 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11369
11370 <blockquote><pre>
11371 2004-05-27 Book Store
11372       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11373       Liabilities:Visa
11374 </pre></blockquote>
11375
11376 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11377 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11378 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11379 Spang</a>,
11380 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11381 Keen</a>,
11382 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11383 Cantino</a> and
11384 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11385 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11386 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11387 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11388 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11389
11390 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11391 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11392 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11393 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11394 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11395
11396 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11397 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11398 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11399 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11400 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11401 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11402 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11403 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11404 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11405
11406       </div>
11407       <div class="tags">
11408
11409
11410         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11411
11412
11413       </div>
11414     </div>
11415     <div class="padding"></div>
11416
11417     <div class="entry">
11418       <div class="title">
11419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
11420       </div>
11421       <div class="date">
11422          6th December 2012
11423       </div>
11424       <div class="body">
11425         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11426 Oslo</a>, we use the
11427 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11428 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11429 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11430 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11431 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11432 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11433 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11434 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11435 Python.</p>
11436
11437 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11438 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11439 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11440 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11441 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11442 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11443
11444 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11445 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11446 user currently logged in:</p>
11447
11448 <blockquote><pre>
11449 #!/usr/bin/env python
11450 import getpass
11451 import xmlrpclib
11452 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11453 username = getpass.getuser()
11454 password = getpass.getpass()
11455 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11456 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11457 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11458 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11459 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11460 print result
11461 </pre></blockquote>
11462
11463 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11464 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11465
11466       </div>
11467       <div class="tags">
11468
11469
11470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
11471
11472
11473       </div>
11474     </div>
11475     <div class="padding"></div>
11476
11477     <div class="entry">
11478       <div class="title">
11479         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
11480       </div>
11481       <div class="date">
11482         17th November 2012
11483       </div>
11484       <div class="body">
11485         <p>While working on a
11486 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11487 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11488 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11489 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11490 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11491 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11492
11493 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11494 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11495 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11496 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11497 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11498 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11499 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11500 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11501 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11502 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11503 arguments.</p>
11504
11505 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11506 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11507 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11508 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11509 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11510 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11511 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11512 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11513
11514 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11515 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11516 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11517 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11518 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11519 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11520 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11521 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11522 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11523 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11524 correct right holder.</p>
11525
11526 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11527 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11528 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11529 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11530 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11531 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11532 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11533 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11534 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11535 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11536 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11537 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11538 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11539 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11540
11541 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11542 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11543 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11544
11545 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11546 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11547
11548       </div>
11549       <div class="tags">
11550
11551
11552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
11553
11554
11555       </div>
11556     </div>
11557     <div class="padding"></div>
11558
11559     <div class="entry">
11560       <div class="title">
11561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11562       </div>
11563       <div class="date">
11564         14th November 2012
11565       </div>
11566       <div class="body">
11567         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11568 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11569 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11570 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11571 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11572 the people behind the German
11573 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11574 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11575 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11576
11577 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11578
11579 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11580 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11581 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11582
11583 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11584 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11585 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11586 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11587 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11588 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11589
11590 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11591 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11592 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11593 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11594 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11595 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11596 project.</p>
11597
11598 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11599 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11600 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11601
11602 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11603 project?</strong></p>
11604
11605 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11606
11607 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11608 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11609 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11610 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11611 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11612 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11613 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11614 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11615 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11616 parents.</p>
11617
11618 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11619 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11620 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11621 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11622 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11623 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11624 Germany.</p>
11625
11626 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11627 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11628 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11629
11630 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11631 Edu?</strong></p>
11632
11633 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11634 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11635
11636 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11637 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11638 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11639 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11640 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11641 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11642 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11643 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11644 teachers, parents...</p>
11645
11646 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11647 Edu?</strong></p>
11648
11649 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11650 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11651
11652 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11653 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11654 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11655 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11656 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11657
11658 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11659 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11660 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11661 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11662 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11663 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11664 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11665
11666 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11667
11668 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11669 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11670 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11671 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11672
11673 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11674 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11675
11676 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11677 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11678 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11679 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11680 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11681
11682 <ul>
11683
11684 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11685 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11686 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11687
11688 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11689 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11690 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11691 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11692 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11693 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11694 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11695
11696 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11697 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11698 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11699 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11700
11701 </ul>
11702
11703       </div>
11704       <div class="tags">
11705
11706
11707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
11708
11709
11710       </div>
11711     </div>
11712     <div class="padding"></div>
11713
11714     <div class="entry">
11715       <div class="title">
11716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
11717       </div>
11718       <div class="date">
11719          4th November 2012
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="body">
11722         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11723 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11724 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11725 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11726 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11727 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11728 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11729 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11730 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11731 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11732 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11733 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11734 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11735 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11736
11737 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11738 that the community already seem to have
11739 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11740 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11741 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11742 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11743 wealth is available.</p>
11744
11745       </div>
11746       <div class="tags">
11747
11748
11749         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11750
11751
11752       </div>
11753     </div>
11754     <div class="padding"></div>
11755
11756     <div class="entry">
11757       <div class="title">
11758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
11759       </div>
11760       <div class="date">
11761         26th October 2012
11762       </div>
11763       <div class="body">
11764         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11765 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11766 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11767 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11768 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11769 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11770 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11771 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11772 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11773 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11774 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11775 it every time.</p>
11776
11777 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11778 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11779 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11780 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11781 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11782 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11783 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11784 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11785 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11786 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11787 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11788 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11789
11790 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11791 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11792 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11793 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11794 article: First the unplanned outage:
11795
11796 <blockquote><pre>
11797 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11798 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11799 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11800 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11801 Duration:    40 minutes
11802 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11803 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11804              a cluster failover.
11805
11806 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11807              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11808 Technician:  [xxx]
11809 </pre></blockquote>
11810
11811 Next the planned outage:
11812
11813 <blockquote><pre>
11814 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11815 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11816 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11817 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11818 Duration:    10 hours
11819 Scope:       H2 Transport
11820 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11821              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11822              4510s.
11823 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11824              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11825              connectivity.
11826 Technician:  [xxx]
11827 </pre></blockquote>
11828
11829 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11830 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11831 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11832 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11833 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11834 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11835 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11836
11837 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11838 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11839 university too.  We do register
11840 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11841 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11842 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11843 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11844 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11845
11846       </div>
11847       <div class="tags">
11848
11849
11850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
11851
11852
11853       </div>
11854     </div>
11855     <div class="padding"></div>
11856
11857     <div class="entry">
11858       <div class="title">
11859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
11860       </div>
11861       <div class="date">
11862         22nd October 2012
11863       </div>
11864       <div class="body">
11865         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11866 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11867 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11868 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11869 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11870 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11871 background information is available in Norwegian from
11872 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11873 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11874 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11875 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11876 willing to
11877 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11878 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11879 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11880 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11881 sounded like
11882 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11883 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11884 later.</p>
11885
11886 <p>And thought this action is
11887 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11888 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11889 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11890 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11891 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11892 rights.</p>
11893
11894 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11895 unacceptable terms.  For example
11896 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11897 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11898 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11899 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11900 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11901
11902 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11903 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11904 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11905 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11906 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11907 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11908 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11909 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11910 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11911 reading two opinions from
11912 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11913 Phipps</a> and
11914 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11915 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11916 details about the original story.</p>
11917
11918       </div>
11919       <div class="tags">
11920
11921
11922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
11923
11924
11925       </div>
11926     </div>
11927     <div class="padding"></div>
11928
11929     <div class="entry">
11930       <div class="title">
11931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11932       </div>
11933       <div class="date">
11934         18th October 2012
11935       </div>
11936       <div class="body">
11937         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11938 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11939 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11940 across a marvellous drawing by
11941 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11942 visualising some of what is going on.
11943
11944 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11945 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11946
11947 <blockquote>
11948 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11949 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11950 </blockquote>
11951
11952 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11953 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11954 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11955 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11956 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11957 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11958
11959       </div>
11960       <div class="tags">
11961
11962
11963         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
11964
11965
11966       </div>
11967     </div>
11968     <div class="padding"></div>
11969
11970     <div class="entry">
11971       <div class="title">
11972         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11973       </div>
11974       <div class="date">
11975         12th October 2012
11976       </div>
11977       <div class="body">
11978         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11979 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11980 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11981 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11982 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11983 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11984 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11985 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11986 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11987 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11988 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11989 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11990 matter".</p>
11991
11992 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11993 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11994 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11995 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11996 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11997 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11998 to argue its side.</p>
11999
12000 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
12001 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
12002 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
12003 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
12004
12005 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
12006 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
12007 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
12008
12009       </div>
12010       <div class="tags">
12011
12012
12013         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
12014
12015
12016       </div>
12017     </div>
12018     <div class="padding"></div>
12019
12020     <div class="entry">
12021       <div class="title">
12022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
12023       </div>
12024       <div class="date">
12025          3rd October 2012
12026       </div>
12027       <div class="body">
12028         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
12029 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
12030 the computer science book collection available in his local
12031 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
12032 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
12033 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
12034 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
12035 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
12036 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
12037 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
12038 recently published books.</p>
12039
12040 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
12041 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
12042 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
12043 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
12044 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
12045 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
12046 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
12047 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
12048 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
12049 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
12050 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
12051 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
12052 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
12053 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
12054 for the library that evening.</p>
12055
12056 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
12057 going to know that for example
12058 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
12059 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
12060 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
12061 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
12062 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
12063 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
12064 book right away.</p>
12065
12066       </div>
12067       <div class="tags">
12068
12069
12070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12071
12072
12073       </div>
12074     </div>
12075     <div class="padding"></div>
12076
12077     <div class="entry">
12078       <div class="title">
12079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
12080       </div>
12081       <div class="date">
12082         23rd September 2012
12083       </div>
12084       <div class="body">
12085         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12086 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12087 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12088 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12089 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12090 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12091
12092 When I started, I
12093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12094 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12095 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12096 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12097 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12098 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12099 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12100
12101 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12102
12103 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12104 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12105 the project files currently available from
12106 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12107
12108 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12109 the updated
12110 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12111 and
12112 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12113 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12114 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12115 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12116
12117       </div>
12118       <div class="tags">
12119
12120
12121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12122
12123
12124       </div>
12125     </div>
12126     <div class="padding"></div>
12127
12128     <div class="entry">
12129       <div class="title">
12130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12131       </div>
12132       <div class="date">
12133         17th September 2012
12134       </div>
12135       <div class="body">
12136         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12137 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12138 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12139 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12140 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12141 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12142 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12143
12144 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12145
12146 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12147 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12148 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12149 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12150 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12151 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12152 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12153 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12154 training is anyway very important</p>
12155
12156 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12157 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12158 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12159 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12160 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12161
12162 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12163 project?</strong></p>
12164
12165 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12166 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12167 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12168 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12169 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12170 hole.</p>
12171
12172 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12173 Edu?</strong></p>
12174
12175 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12176 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12177 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12178 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12179 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12180 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12181 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12182 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12183 hassle.</p>
12184
12185 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12186 Edu?</strong></p>
12187
12188 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12189 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12190 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12191 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12192 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12193 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12194 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12195 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12196
12197 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12198
12199 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12200 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12201 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12202 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12203 has the same...</p>
12204
12205 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12206 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12207 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12208 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12209
12210 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12211 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12212
12213 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12214 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12215 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12216
12217 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12218 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12219 don't.</p>
12220
12221 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12222 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12223 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12224 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12225 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12226 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12227 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12228
12229       </div>
12230       <div class="tags">
12231
12232
12233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12234
12235
12236       </div>
12237     </div>
12238     <div class="padding"></div>
12239
12240     <div class="entry">
12241       <div class="title">
12242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12243       </div>
12244       <div class="date">
12245         15th September 2012
12246       </div>
12247       <div class="body">
12248         <p>After the
12249 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12250 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12251 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12252 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12253 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12254 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12255 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12256 was
12257 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
12258 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12259
12260 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12261 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12262 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12263 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12264 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12265 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12266 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12267 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12268
12269 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12270 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12271 IETF.</p>
12272
12273       </div>
12274       <div class="tags">
12275
12276
12277         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12278
12279
12280       </div>
12281     </div>
12282     <div class="padding"></div>
12283
12284     <div class="entry">
12285       <div class="title">
12286         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="date">
12289         12th September 2012
12290       </div>
12291       <div class="body">
12292         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12293 publication of of
12294 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12295 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12296 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12297 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12298 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12299 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12300 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12301 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12302 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12303 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12304
12305 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12306 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12307 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12308 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12309
12310 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12311 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12312
12313       </div>
12314       <div class="tags">
12315
12316
12317         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12318
12319
12320       </div>
12321     </div>
12322     <div class="padding"></div>
12323
12324     <div class="entry">
12325       <div class="title">
12326         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
12327       </div>
12328       <div class="date">
12329          7th September 2012
12330       </div>
12331       <div class="body">
12332         <p>As I
12333 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12334 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12335 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12336 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12337 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12338
12339 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12340 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12341 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12342 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12343
12344 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12345 PostScript formats at
12346 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12347 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12348
12349       </div>
12350       <div class="tags">
12351
12352
12353         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
12354
12355
12356       </div>
12357     </div>
12358     <div class="padding"></div>
12359
12360     <div class="entry">
12361       <div class="title">
12362         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
12363       </div>
12364       <div class="date">
12365         23rd August 2012
12366       </div>
12367       <div class="body">
12368         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12369 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12370 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12371 revisit the great site
12372 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12373 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12374 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12375
12376       </div>
12377       <div class="tags">
12378
12379
12380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12381
12382
12383       </div>
12384     </div>
12385     <div class="padding"></div>
12386
12387     <div class="entry">
12388       <div class="title">
12389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
12390       </div>
12391       <div class="date">
12392         17th August 2012
12393       </div>
12394       <div class="body">
12395         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12396 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12397 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12398 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12399 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12400 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12401 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12402 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12403 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12404 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12405 summer I
12406 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12407 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12408 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12409
12410 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12411 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12412 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12413 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12414 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12415 progress:</p>
12416
12417 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12418
12419 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12420 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12421 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12422 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12423 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12424 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12425
12426 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12427 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12428 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12429 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12430 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12431 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12432 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12433 project files currently available from <a
12434 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12435
12436 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12437 the updated
12438 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12439 and
12440 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12441 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12442 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12443 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12444
12445       </div>
12446       <div class="tags">
12447
12448
12449         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12450
12451
12452       </div>
12453     </div>
12454     <div class="padding"></div>
12455
12456     <div class="entry">
12457       <div class="title">
12458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
12459       </div>
12460       <div class="date">
12461         10th August 2012
12462       </div>
12463       <div class="body">
12464         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12465 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12466 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12467 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12468 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12469 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12470 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12471 case for the language
12472 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12473 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12474
12475 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12476 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12477 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12478 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12479 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12480
12481 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12482 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12483 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12484 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12485 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12486 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12487 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12488 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12489 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12490 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12491
12492 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12493 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12494 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12495 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12496 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12497 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12498 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12499 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12500 at the same time. :(</p>
12501
12502 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12503 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12504 processors. :(</p>
12505
12506 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12507
12508       </div>
12509       <div class="tags">
12510
12511
12512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12513
12514
12515       </div>
12516     </div>
12517     <div class="padding"></div>
12518
12519     <div class="entry">
12520       <div class="title">
12521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12522       </div>
12523       <div class="date">
12524         31st July 2012
12525       </div>
12526       <div class="body">
12527         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12528 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12529 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12530 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12531 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12532 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12533 out.</p>
12534
12535 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12536 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12537
12538 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12539 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12540 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12541 available from
12542 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12543 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12544 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12545 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12546 Squeeze.</p>
12547
12548 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12549 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12550 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12551 problems.</p>
12552
12553 <ul>
12554
12555 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12556    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12557    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12558    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12559    index references spanning several pages (See
12560    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12561    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12562    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12563
12564 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12565    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12566    #683163</a>).</li>
12567
12568 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12569    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12570    footnote and text body, see
12571    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12572    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12573    refs listed are not right).</li>
12574
12575 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12576
12577 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12578    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12579
12580 </ul>
12581
12582 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12583 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12584 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12585
12586 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12587
12588       </div>
12589       <div class="tags">
12590
12591
12592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
12593
12594
12595       </div>
12596     </div>
12597     <div class="padding"></div>
12598
12599     <div class="entry">
12600       <div class="title">
12601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
12602       </div>
12603       <div class="date">
12604         21st July 2012
12605       </div>
12606       <div class="body">
12607         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12609 norwegian version</a> of the book
12610 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12611 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12612 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12613 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12614 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12615
12616 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12617 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12618 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12619 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12620 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12621 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12622 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12623 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12624 print. :)</p>
12625
12626 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12627 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12628 language.</p>
12629
12630       </div>
12631       <div class="tags">
12632
12633
12634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12635
12636
12637       </div>
12638     </div>
12639     <div class="padding"></div>
12640
12641     <div class="entry">
12642       <div class="title">
12643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
12644       </div>
12645       <div class="date">
12646         16th July 2012
12647       </div>
12648       <div class="body">
12649         <p>I am currently working on a
12650 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12651 to translate</a> the book
12652 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12653 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12654 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12655 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12656 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12657 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12658 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12659
12660 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12661 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12662 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12663 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12664 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12665 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12666 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12667 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12668 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12669
12670       </div>
12671       <div class="tags">
12672
12673
12674         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12675
12676
12677       </div>
12678     </div>
12679     <div class="padding"></div>
12680
12681     <div class="entry">
12682       <div class="title">
12683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12684       </div>
12685       <div class="date">
12686          9th July 2012
12687       </div>
12688       <div class="body">
12689         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12690 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12691 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12692 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12693 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12694 to adjust and scale the just released
12695 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12696 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12697 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12698
12699 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12700
12701 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12702 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12703 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12704 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12705 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12706 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12707 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12708 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12709
12710 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12711 project?</strong></p>
12712
12713 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12714 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12715 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12716 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12717 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12718 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12719
12720 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12721 Edu?</strong></p>
12722
12723 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12724 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12725 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12726 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12727 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12728 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12729 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12730 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12731 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12732 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12733 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12734 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12735 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12736 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12737 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12738 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12739 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12740 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12741 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12742 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12743 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12744 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12745 quicker to update.
12746
12747 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12748 Edu?</strong></p>
12749
12750 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12751 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12752 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12753 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12754 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12755 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12756
12757 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12758 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12759 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12760 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12761 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12762 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12763 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12764 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12765 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12766 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12767 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12768 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12769 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12770 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12771 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12772
12773 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12774 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12775 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12776 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12777 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12778 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12779 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12780 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12781
12782 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12783 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12784 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12785 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12786 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12787 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12788 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12789 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12790 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12791 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12792 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12793 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12794 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12795 sound file.</p>
12796
12797 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12798 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12799 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12800 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12801 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12802 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12803 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12804 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12805 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12806
12807 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12808
12809 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12810 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12811 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12812 )</p>
12813
12814 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12815 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12816
12817 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12818 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12819 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12820 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12821 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12822 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12823 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12824 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12825 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12826 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12827 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12828 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12829 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12830 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12831 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12832
12833 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12834 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12835 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12836 management with Airtime</a>,
12837 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12838 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12839 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12840 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12841 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12842
12843       </div>
12844       <div class="tags">
12845
12846
12847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
12848
12849
12850       </div>
12851     </div>
12852     <div class="padding"></div>
12853
12854     <div class="entry">
12855       <div class="title">
12856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12857       </div>
12858       <div class="date">
12859          8th July 2012
12860       </div>
12861       <div class="body">
12862         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12863 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12864 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12865 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12866 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12867 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12868 Steinberg in his blog post
12869 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12870 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12871 spending of your tax money.</p>
12872
12873 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12874 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12875 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12876 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12877 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12878 purchases.</p>
12879
12880       </div>
12881       <div class="tags">
12882
12883
12884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12885
12886
12887       </div>
12888     </div>
12889     <div class="padding"></div>
12890
12891     <div class="entry">
12892       <div class="title">
12893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12894       </div>
12895       <div class="date">
12896          7th July 2012
12897       </div>
12898       <div class="body">
12899         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12900 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12901 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12902 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12903 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12904 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12905 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12906 receive.  The software is
12907
12908 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12909 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12910 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12911 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12912 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12913 Windows</a>.</p>
12914
12915 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12916 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12917
12918 <p><ul>
12919
12920   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12921     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12922
12923   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12924     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12925     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12926     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12927     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12928     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12929     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12930     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12931     </li>
12932
12933   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12934     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12935
12936   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12937     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12938
12939   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12940     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12941
12942   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12943
12944   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12945     formats </li>
12946
12947   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12948     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12949     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12950     (as separate sets)</li>
12951
12952   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12953     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12954     percentage)</li>
12955
12956   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12957     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12958     memory):
12959     <ul>
12960       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12961       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12962       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12963       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12964       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12965       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12966       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12967       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12968       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12969       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12970           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12971           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12972           activity)</li>
12973       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12974       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12975     </ul></li>
12976
12977   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12978     <ul>
12979       <li>Break periods</li>
12980       <li>For teacher(s):
12981         <ul>
12982           <li>Not available periods</li>
12983           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12984           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12985           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12986           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12987           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12988
12989           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12990             days per week</li>
12991         </ul></li>
12992       <li>For students (sets):
12993         <ul>
12994           <li>Not available periods</li>
12995           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12996           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12997           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12998           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12999           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
13000
13001           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
13002             days per week</li>
13003         </ul></li>
13004       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
13005         <ul>
13006           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
13007           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
13008           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
13009           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
13010           <li>End(s) students day</li>
13011           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
13012           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
13013             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
13014           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
13015           <li>Not overlapping</li>
13016           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
13017           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
13018         </ul></li>
13019     </ul></li>
13020
13021   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
13022     <ul>
13023       <li>Room not available periods</li>
13024       <li>For teacher(s):
13025         <ul>
13026           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13027           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13028           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13029         </ul>
13030       </li>
13031
13032       <li>For students (sets):
13033         <ul>
13034           <li>Home room(s)</li>
13035           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
13036           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
13037         </ul>
13038       </li>
13039       <li>Preferred room(s):
13040         <ul>
13041           <li>For a subject</li>
13042           <li>For an activity tag</li>
13043           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
13044           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
13045         </ul>
13046       </li>
13047
13048       <li>For a set of activities:
13049         <ul>
13050           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
13051         </ul>
13052       </li>
13053     </ul>
13054   </li>
13055 </ul></p>
13056
13057 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
13058 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
13059 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
13060 manually, check it out.
13061
13062 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
13063 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
13064 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
13065 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
13066 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
13067 section</a>.</p>
13068
13069       </div>
13070       <div class="tags">
13071
13072
13073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13074
13075
13076       </div>
13077     </div>
13078     <div class="padding"></div>
13079
13080     <div class="entry">
13081       <div class="title">
13082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
13083       </div>
13084       <div class="date">
13085          3rd July 2012
13086       </div>
13087       <div class="body">
13088         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13089 project (Norwegian version of
13090 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13091 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13092 a problem with the municipalities using
13093 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13094 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13095 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13096 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13097 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13098 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13099 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13100 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13101 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13102 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13103 the From: header.</p>
13104
13105 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13106 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13107 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13108 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13109 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13110 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13111 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13112 behaviour.</p>
13113
13114 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13115 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13116 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13117 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13118 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13119 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13120 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13121
13122       </div>
13123       <div class="tags">
13124
13125
13126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13127
13128
13129       </div>
13130     </div>
13131     <div class="padding"></div>
13132
13133     <div class="entry">
13134       <div class="title">
13135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
13136       </div>
13137       <div class="date">
13138         26th June 2012
13139       </div>
13140       <div class="body">
13141         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13142 another interview with the people behind
13143 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13144 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13145 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13146 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13147 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13148 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13149 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13150
13151 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13152
13153 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13154 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13155 ICT in schools</p>
13156
13157 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13158 project?</strong></p>
13159
13160 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13161 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13162 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13163 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13164
13165 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13166 Edu?</strong></p>
13167
13168 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13169 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13170 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13171 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13172
13173 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13174 Edu?</strong></p>
13175
13176 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13177 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13178 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13179 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13180 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13181 technologies in school.</p>
13182
13183 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13184
13185 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13186 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13187 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13188
13189 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13190 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13191
13192 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13193 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13194 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13195 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13196
13197 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13198 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13199 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13200
13201 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13202 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13203 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13204 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13205 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13206 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13207 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13208 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13209 working there.</p>
13210
13211       </div>
13212       <div class="tags">
13213
13214
13215         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13216
13217
13218       </div>
13219     </div>
13220     <div class="padding"></div>
13221
13222     <div class="entry">
13223       <div class="title">
13224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13225       </div>
13226       <div class="date">
13227         24th June 2012
13228       </div>
13229       <div class="body">
13230         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13231 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13232 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13233 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13234 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13235 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13236 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13237 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13238 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13239 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13240 missing in my book.</p>
13241
13242 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13243 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13244 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13245 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13246 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13247 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13248 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13249
13250       </div>
13251       <div class="tags">
13252
13253
13254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
13255
13256
13257       </div>
13258     </div>
13259     <div class="padding"></div>
13260
13261     <div class="entry">
13262       <div class="title">
13263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
13264       </div>
13265       <div class="date">
13266         11th June 2012
13267       </div>
13268       <div class="body">
13269         <p>During my work on
13270 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13271 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13272 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13273 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13274 explanation.</p>
13275
13276 <p><ul>
13277
13278 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13279 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13280 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13281 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13282 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13283 installation.</li>
13284
13285 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13286 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13287 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13288 at least try to enable it for these services:
13289 <ul>
13290
13291   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13292     quotas.</li>
13293   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13294   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13295   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13296   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13297   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13298
13299 </ul></li>
13300
13301 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13302 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13303 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13304 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13305
13306 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13307 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13308 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13309
13310 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13311 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13312 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13313 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13314 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13315 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13316
13317 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13318 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13319 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13320 in Wheezy.
13321
13322 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13323 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13324 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13325
13326 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13327 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13328 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13329 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13330
13331 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13332 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13333 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13334 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13335
13336 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13337 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13338 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13339
13340 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13341 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13342 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13343
13344 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13345 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13346 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13347 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13348 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13349
13350 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13351 <ul>
13352
13353 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13354 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13355 <li>and probably more?</li>
13356 </ul></li>
13357
13358 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13359 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13360 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13361 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13362 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13363 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13364 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13365 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13366
13367
13368 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13369 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13370 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13371 use.</li>
13372
13373 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13374 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13375 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13376 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13377 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13378
13379 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13380 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13381 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13382 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13383 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13384 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13385
13386 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13387 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13388 There are at least three implementations,
13389 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13390 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13391 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13392 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13393 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13394 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13395 given room.</li>
13396
13397 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13398 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13399 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13400 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13401 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13402 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13403 investigated.</li>
13404
13405 </ul></p>
13406
13407 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13408 version.</p>
13409
13410       </div>
13411       <div class="tags">
13412
13413
13414         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13415
13416
13417       </div>
13418     </div>
13419     <div class="padding"></div>
13420
13421     <div class="entry">
13422       <div class="title">
13423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
13424       </div>
13425       <div class="date">
13426          9th June 2012
13427       </div>
13428       <div class="body">
13429         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13430 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
13431 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13432 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13433 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13434 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13435 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13436 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13437 be willing to pay for.</p>
13438
13439 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13440 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13441 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13442 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13443 Orwell</a>.</p>
13444
13445       </div>
13446       <div class="tags">
13447
13448
13449         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
13450
13451
13452       </div>
13453     </div>
13454     <div class="padding"></div>
13455
13456     <div class="entry">
13457       <div class="title">
13458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
13459       </div>
13460       <div class="date">
13461          6th June 2012
13462       </div>
13463       <div class="body">
13464         <p>A few days ago
13465 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13466 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13467 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13468 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13469 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13470 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13471 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13472 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13473 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13474 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13475 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13476
13477 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13478 output:
13479
13480 <blockquote><pre>
13481 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
13482 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
13483 %
13484 </pre></blockquote>
13485
13486 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13487 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13488 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13489
13490       </div>
13491       <div class="tags">
13492
13493
13494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13495
13496
13497       </div>
13498     </div>
13499     <div class="padding"></div>
13500
13501     <div class="entry">
13502       <div class="title">
13503         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13504       </div>
13505       <div class="date">
13506          2nd June 2012
13507       </div>
13508       <div class="body">
13509         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13510 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13511 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13512 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13513 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13514 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13515
13516 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13517
13518 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13519 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13520 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13521 by Angela).</p>
13522
13523 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13524 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13525 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13526 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13527 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13528
13529 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13530 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13531 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13532 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13533 skills with communication skills.</p>
13534
13535 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13536 project?</strong></p>
13537
13538 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13539 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13540 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13541 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13542 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13543
13544 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13545 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13546 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13547 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13548 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13549 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13550 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13551 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13552 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13553
13554 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13555 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13556 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13557
13558 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13559
13560 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13561 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13562 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13563 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13564 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13565 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13566 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13567 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13568 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13569 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13570 point.</p>
13571
13572 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13573 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13574 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13575 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13576 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13577 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13578
13579 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13580 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13581 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13582 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13583 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13584 spare time.</p>
13585
13586 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13587 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13588 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13589 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13590 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13591
13592 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13593 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13594 avoidance do exist.</p>
13595
13596 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13597 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13598 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13599 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13600 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13601 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13602 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13603
13604 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13605 Edu?</strong></p>
13606
13607 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13608 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13609 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13610 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13611 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13612 developers, etc.</p>
13613
13614 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13615 Edu?</strong></p>
13616
13617 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13618
13619 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13620 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13621 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13622 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13623 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13624 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13625 contribute).</p>
13626
13627 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13628 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13629 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13630 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13631 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13632 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13633 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13634 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13635 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13636 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13637
13638 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13639
13640 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13641
13642 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13643 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13644 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13645
13646 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13647 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13648 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13649 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13650
13651 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13652 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13653 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13654 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13655 whiteboard.</p>
13656
13657 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13658
13659 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13660 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13661
13662 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13663 enrol people.</p>
13664
13665       </div>
13666       <div class="tags">
13667
13668
13669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13670
13671
13672       </div>
13673     </div>
13674     <div class="padding"></div>
13675
13676     <div class="entry">
13677       <div class="title">
13678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
13679       </div>
13680       <div class="date">
13681          1st June 2012
13682       </div>
13683       <div class="body">
13684         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13686 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13687 I have learned from colleges here at the
13688 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13689 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13690 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13691 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13692 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13693
13694 <p><pre>
13695 use strict;
13696 use warnings;
13697 use SOAP::Lite;
13698 use Data::Dumper;
13699 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13700 my $App = 'test';
13701 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13702 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13703 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13704     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13705     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13706     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13707     ;
13708 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13709     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13710     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13711     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13712 );
13713 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13714 </pre></p>
13715
13716 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13717
13718 <p><pre>
13719 $VAR1 = {
13720           'Asset' => {
13721                      'Entitlements' => {
13722                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13723                                                             {
13724                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13725                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13726                                                               'Provider' => '',
13727                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13728                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13729                                                             },
13730                                                             {
13731                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13732                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13733                                                               'Provider' => '',
13734                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13735                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13736                                                             },
13737                                                             {
13738                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13739                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13740                                                               'Provider' => '',
13741                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13742                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13743                                                             }
13744                                                           ]
13745                                      },
13746                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13747                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13748                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13749                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13750                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13751                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13752                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13753                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13754                                         }
13755                    }
13756         };
13757 </pre></p>
13758
13759 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13760 service outside the
13761 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13762 documentation</a>, and according to
13763 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13764 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13765 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13766
13767 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13768 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13769
13770       </div>
13771       <div class="tags">
13772
13773
13774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13775
13776
13777       </div>
13778     </div>
13779     <div class="padding"></div>
13780
13781     <div class="entry">
13782       <div class="title">
13783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13784       </div>
13785       <div class="date">
13786         31st May 2012
13787       </div>
13788       <div class="body">
13789         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13790 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13791 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13792 running Debian Squeeze, where
13793 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13794 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13795 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13796 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13797 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13798 another day.</p>
13799
13800 <p>After calibration, I get a
13801 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13802 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13803 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13804 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13805 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13806 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13807 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13808 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13809 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13810 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13811 and a simple</p>
13812
13813 <p><pre>
13814 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13815 </pre></p>
13816
13817 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13818 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13819 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13820 enough for now.</p>
13821
13822       </div>
13823       <div class="tags">
13824
13825
13826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13827
13828
13829       </div>
13830     </div>
13831     <div class="padding"></div>
13832
13833     <div class="entry">
13834       <div class="title">
13835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13836       </div>
13837       <div class="date">
13838         27th May 2012
13839       </div>
13840       <div class="body">
13841         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13842 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13843 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13844 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13845 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13846 since then, helping to make sure the
13847 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13848 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13849
13850 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13851
13852 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13853 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13854 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13855 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13856 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13857 our computer network.</p>
13858
13859 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13860 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13861 (4 months).</p>
13862
13863 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13864 project?</strong></p>
13865
13866 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13867 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13868 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13869 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13870 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13871 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13872 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13873 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13874 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13875 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13876 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13877 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13878 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13879 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13880
13881 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13882 Edu?</strong></p>
13883
13884 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13885 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13886 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13887 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13888 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13889 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13890 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13891 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13892
13893 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13894 Edu?</strong></p>
13895
13896 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13897 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13898 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13899 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13900 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13901 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13902 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13903 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13904 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13905 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13906 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13907 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13908
13909 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13910
13911 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13912 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13913 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13914
13915 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13916 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13917
13918 <p><ol>
13919
13920 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13921 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13922 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13923 developing.</li>
13924
13925 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13926 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13927 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13928 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13929 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13930
13931 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13932 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13933 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13934
13935 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13936 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13937 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13938 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13939
13940 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13941 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13942 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13943
13944 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13945
13946 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13947 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13948 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13949 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13950
13951 </ol></p>
13952
13953       </div>
13954       <div class="tags">
13955
13956
13957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
13958
13959
13960       </div>
13961     </div>
13962     <div class="padding"></div>
13963
13964     <div class="entry">
13965       <div class="title">
13966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13967       </div>
13968       <div class="date">
13969         26th May 2012
13970       </div>
13971       <div class="body">
13972         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13973 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13974 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13975 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13976 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13977
13978 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13979 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
13980 comment:</p>
13981
13982 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13983 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13984 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13985 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13986 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13987 </blockquote></p>
13988
13989 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13990 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13991 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13992 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13993 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13994 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13995 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13996 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13997 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13998 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13999 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
14000 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
14001 of wasted effort.</p>
14002
14003 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
14004 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
14005 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
14006
14007 <p>See
14008 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
14009 and
14010 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
14011 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
14012 </blockquote></p>
14013
14014       </div>
14015       <div class="tags">
14016
14017
14018         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
14019
14020
14021       </div>
14022     </div>
14023     <div class="padding"></div>
14024
14025     <div class="entry">
14026       <div class="title">
14027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
14028       </div>
14029       <div class="date">
14030         18th May 2012
14031       </div>
14032       <div class="body">
14033         <p>In january, I
14034 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
14035 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
14036 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
14037 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
14038 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
14039 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
14040 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
14041 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
14042 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
14043 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
14044
14045 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
14046 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
14047 drivers. :)</p>
14048
14049       </div>
14050       <div class="tags">
14051
14052
14053         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14054
14055
14056       </div>
14057     </div>
14058     <div class="padding"></div>
14059
14060     <div class="entry">
14061       <div class="title">
14062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
14063       </div>
14064       <div class="date">
14065         13th May 2012
14066       </div>
14067       <div class="body">
14068         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
14069 publish another interview with the people behind
14070 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
14071 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
14072 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
14073 details get right before release.
14074
14075 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14076
14077 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
14078 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
14079 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
14080 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
14081 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
14082 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
14083 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14084 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14085
14086 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14087 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14088 home since 2006.</p>
14089
14090 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14091 project?</strong></p>
14092
14093 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14094 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14095 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14096 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14097 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14098 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14099
14100 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14101 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14102 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14103 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14104 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14105 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14106 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14107 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14108 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14109 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14110 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14111 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14112 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14113 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14114 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14115 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14116
14117 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14118 Edu?</strong></p>
14119
14120 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14121 for me as today.</p>
14122
14123 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14124
14125 <p><ul>
14126
14127 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14128 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14129
14130 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14131 cost.</li>
14132
14133 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14134 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14135 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14136 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14137 server</li>
14138
14139 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14140 school.</li>
14141
14142 </ul></p>
14143
14144 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14145 came up in this way:</p>
14146
14147 <p><ul>
14148
14149 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14150 now.</li>
14151
14152 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14153 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14154 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14155
14156 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14157 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14158 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14159
14160 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14161 different needs.</li>
14162
14163 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14164
14165 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14166 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14167 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14168
14169 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14170 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14171
14172 </ul></p>
14173
14174 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14175 Edu?</strong></p>
14176
14177 <p><ul>
14178
14179 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14180 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14181 whole municipality areas.</li>
14182
14183 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14184 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14185 politicians.</li>
14186
14187 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14188
14189 </ul></p>
14190
14191 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14192
14193 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14194 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14195 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14196 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14197 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14198 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14199
14200 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14201 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14202 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14203 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14204 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14205
14206 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14207 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14208
14209 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14210 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14211 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14212
14213       </div>
14214       <div class="tags">
14215
14216
14217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14218
14219
14220       </div>
14221     </div>
14222     <div class="padding"></div>
14223
14224     <div class="entry">
14225       <div class="title">
14226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
14227       </div>
14228       <div class="date">
14229         30th April 2012
14230       </div>
14231       <div class="body">
14232         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14233 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14234
14235 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14236 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14237 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14238 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14239 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14240 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14241 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14242 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14243 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14244 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14245 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14246 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14247 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14248 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14249 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14250 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14251
14252 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14253 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14254 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14255 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14256 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14257 finally found a Danish supplier
14258 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14259 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14260 days ago.</p>
14261
14262 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14263 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14264 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14265 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14266 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14267 toys.</p>
14268
14269       </div>
14270       <div class="tags">
14271
14272
14273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14274
14275
14276       </div>
14277     </div>
14278     <div class="padding"></div>
14279
14280     <div class="entry">
14281       <div class="title">
14282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
14283       </div>
14284       <div class="date">
14285         26th April 2012
14286       </div>
14287       <div class="body">
14288         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14289 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14290 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14291 that the video editor application included with
14292 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14293 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14294 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14295
14296 <p><blockquote>
14297 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14298 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14299 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14300 </blockquote></p>
14301
14302 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14303
14304 <p><blockquote>
14305 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14306 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14307 </blockquote></p>
14308
14309 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14310 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14311 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14312 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14313 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14314 video.  AMR is
14315 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14316 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14317 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14318 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14319 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14320 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14321 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14322
14323 <p>I know why I prefer
14324 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14325 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14326
14327       </div>
14328       <div class="tags">
14329
14330
14331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14332
14333
14334       </div>
14335     </div>
14336     <div class="padding"></div>
14337
14338     <div class="entry">
14339       <div class="title">
14340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14341       </div>
14342       <div class="date">
14343         19th April 2012
14344       </div>
14345       <div class="body">
14346         <p>Here in Norway, the
14347 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14348 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14349 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14350 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14351 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14352 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14353 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14354 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14355 on the same level.</p>
14356
14357 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14358 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14359 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14360 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14361 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14362 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14363 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14364 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14365 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14366 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14367 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14368 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14369 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14370 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14371 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14372 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14373 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14374 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14375
14376 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14377 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14378 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14379 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14380 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14381 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14382 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14383 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14384
14385 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14386 from Simon Phipps
14387 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14388 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14389
14390 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14391 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14392 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14393 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14394 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14395 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14396 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14397 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14398 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14399
14400       </div>
14401       <div class="tags">
14402
14403
14404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14405
14406
14407       </div>
14408     </div>
14409     <div class="padding"></div>
14410
14411     <div class="entry">
14412       <div class="title">
14413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14414       </div>
14415       <div class="date">
14416         15th April 2012
14417       </div>
14418       <div class="body">
14419         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14420 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14421 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14422 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14423 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14424 up in the recently released
14425 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14426 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14427
14428 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14429
14430 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14431 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14432 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14433 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14434 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14435 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14436
14437 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14438 project?</strong></p>
14439
14440 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14441 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14442 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14443 contributing.</p>
14444
14445 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14446 Edu?</strong></p>
14447
14448 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14449 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14450 Debian Project!</p>
14451
14452 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14453 Edu?</strong></p>
14454
14455 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14456 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14457 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14458 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14459 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14460 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14461 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14462
14463 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14464 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14465
14466 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14467
14468 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14469 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14470 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14471 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14472
14473 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14474 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14475
14476 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14477 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14478 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14479 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14480 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14481 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14482 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14483
14484 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14485 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14486 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14487 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14488 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14489 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14490 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14491 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14492
14493       </div>
14494       <div class="tags">
14495
14496
14497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14498
14499
14500       </div>
14501     </div>
14502     <div class="padding"></div>
14503
14504     <div class="entry">
14505       <div class="title">
14506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14507       </div>
14508       <div class="date">
14509          8th April 2012
14510       </div>
14511       <div class="body">
14512         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14513 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14514 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14515 contributor to the
14516 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14517 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14518
14519 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14520
14521 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14522 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14523
14524 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14525 project?</strong></p>
14526
14527 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14528 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14529 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14530 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14531 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14532 "localisation".</p>
14533
14534 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14535 Edu?</strong></p>
14536
14537 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14538 Edu?</strong></p>
14539
14540 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14541 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14542 education system.</p>
14543
14544 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14545 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14546 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14547 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14548
14549 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14550
14551 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14552 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14553 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14554
14555 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14556 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14557
14558 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14559 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14560 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14561
14562       </div>
14563       <div class="tags">
14564
14565
14566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14567
14568
14569       </div>
14570     </div>
14571     <div class="padding"></div>
14572
14573     <div class="entry">
14574       <div class="title">
14575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
14576       </div>
14577       <div class="date">
14578          6th April 2012
14579       </div>
14580       <div class="body">
14581         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14582 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14583 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14584 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14585 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14586 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14587 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14588 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14589 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14590
14591 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14592 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14593 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14594 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14595 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14596 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14597 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14598 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14599
14600 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14601 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14602 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14603 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14604 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14605 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14606 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14607 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14608
14609 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14610 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14611 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14612 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14613 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14614 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14615 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14616 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14617 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14618 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14619
14620 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14621 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14622 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14623 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14624
14625 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14626 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14627
14628 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14629 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14630 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14631 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14632
14633       </div>
14634       <div class="tags">
14635
14636
14637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14638
14639
14640       </div>
14641     </div>
14642     <div class="padding"></div>
14643
14644     <div class="entry">
14645       <div class="title">
14646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14647       </div>
14648       <div class="date">
14649          5th April 2012
14650       </div>
14651       <div class="body">
14652         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14653 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14654 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14655 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14656 for schools.  Check out his article
14657 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14658 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14659
14660       </div>
14661       <div class="tags">
14662
14663
14664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14665
14666
14667       </div>
14668     </div>
14669     <div class="padding"></div>
14670
14671     <div class="entry">
14672       <div class="title">
14673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14674       </div>
14675       <div class="date">
14676          1st April 2012
14677       </div>
14678       <div class="body">
14679         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14680 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14681 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14682 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14683
14684 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14685
14686 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14687 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14688 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14689 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14690 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14691 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14692 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14693 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14694
14695 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14696 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14697 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14698 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14699 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14700 the end of April this year.</p>
14701
14702 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14703 project?</strong></p>
14704
14705 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14706 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14707 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14708 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14709 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14710 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14711 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14712 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14713 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14714 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14715 Skolelinux.</p>
14716
14717 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14718 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14719 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14720 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14721 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14722 the admin teachers.</p>
14723
14724 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14725 Edu?</strong></p>
14726
14727 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14728 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14729 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14730
14731 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14732 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14733 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14734 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14735 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14736
14737 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14738 Edu?</strong></p>
14739
14740 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14741
14742 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14743
14744 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14745 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14746 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14747 LibreOffice.</p>
14748
14749 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14750 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14751
14752 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14753 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14754 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14755
14756       </div>
14757       <div class="tags">
14758
14759
14760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14761
14762
14763       </div>
14764     </div>
14765     <div class="padding"></div>
14766
14767     <div class="entry">
14768       <div class="title">
14769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
14770       </div>
14771       <div class="date">
14772         25th March 2012
14773       </div>
14774       <div class="body">
14775         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14776
14777 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14778 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14779 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14780 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14781 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14782 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14783 and download as a
14784 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14785 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14786
14787 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14788   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
14789     <p>Download video as
14790       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14791 </video></p>
14792
14793       </div>
14794       <div class="tags">
14795
14796
14797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14798
14799
14800       </div>
14801     </div>
14802     <div class="padding"></div>
14803
14804     <div class="entry">
14805       <div class="title">
14806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14807       </div>
14808       <div class="date">
14809         19th March 2012
14810       </div>
14811       <div class="body">
14812         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14813 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14814 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14815 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14816 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14817
14818 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14819
14820 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14821 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14822 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14823 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14824 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14825 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14826 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14827 installations.</p>
14828
14829 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14830 project?</strong></p>
14831
14832 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14833 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14834 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14835 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14836 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14837 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14838 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14839 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14840 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14841
14842 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14843 Edu?</strong></p>
14844
14845 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14846 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14847 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14848 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14849 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14850 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14851 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14852 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14853
14854 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14855 Edu?</strong></p>
14856
14857 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14858 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14859 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14860 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14861 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14862
14863 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14864
14865 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14866 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14867 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14868 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14869 that counts...)</p>
14870
14871 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14872 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14873
14874 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14875 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14876 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14877 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14878 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14879 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14880 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14881 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14882 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14883 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14884 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14885
14886 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14887 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14888 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14889
14890       </div>
14891       <div class="tags">
14892
14893
14894         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
14895
14896
14897       </div>
14898     </div>
14899     <div class="padding"></div>
14900
14901     <div class="entry">
14902       <div class="title">
14903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14904       </div>
14905       <div class="date">
14906         16th March 2012
14907       </div>
14908       <div class="body">
14909         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14910 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14911 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14912 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14913
14914 <ol>
14915
14916 <li>The documentation is written in a
14917 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14918 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14919 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14920 docbook XML.</li>
14921
14922 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14923 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14924 with the translated text.</li>
14925
14926 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14927 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14928 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14929 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14930 images.</li>
14931
14932 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14933 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14934
14935 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14936 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14937
14938 </ol>
14939
14940 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14941 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14942 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14943 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14944 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14945
14946 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14947 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14948 package</a>.</p>
14949
14950       </div>
14951       <div class="tags">
14952
14953
14954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14955
14956
14957       </div>
14958     </div>
14959     <div class="padding"></div>
14960
14961     <div class="entry">
14962       <div class="title">
14963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14964       </div>
14965       <div class="date">
14966         11th March 2012
14967       </div>
14968       <div class="body">
14969         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14970 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14971 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14972 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14973 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14974 you have not done so already.</p>
14975
14976 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14977 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14978 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14979 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14980
14981       </div>
14982       <div class="tags">
14983
14984
14985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14986
14987
14988       </div>
14989     </div>
14990     <div class="padding"></div>
14991
14992     <div class="entry">
14993       <div class="title">
14994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14995       </div>
14996       <div class="date">
14997          9th March 2012
14998       </div>
14999       <div class="body">
15000         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
15001 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
15002 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15003 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
15004 more international audience.</p>
15005
15006 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
15007 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
15008 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
15009 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
15010 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
15011 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
15012 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
15013
15014
15015 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15016
15017 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
15018 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
15019 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
15020 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
15021 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
15022 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
15023 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
15024 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
15025 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
15026 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
15027 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
15028
15029 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15030 project?</strong></p>
15031
15032 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
15033 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
15034 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
15035 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
15036 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
15037 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
15038 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
15039 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
15040 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
15041 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
15042 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
15043 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
15044 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
15045
15046 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15047 Edu?</strong></p>
15048
15049 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
15050 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
15051 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
15052 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
15053 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
15054 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
15055 Japan.</p>
15056
15057 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15058 Edu?</strong></p>
15059
15060 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
15061 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
15062 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
15063 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
15064 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
15065 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
15066 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
15067 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
15068 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
15069 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
15070 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
15071 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
15072 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
15073 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
15074 help.</p>
15075
15076 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15077
15078 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
15079 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
15080 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
15081 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
15082 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
15083 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15084 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15085 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15086 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15087 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15088 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15089
15090 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15091 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15092
15093 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15094 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15095 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15096 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15097 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15098 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15099 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15100 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15101 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15102 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15103 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15104 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15105
15106       </div>
15107       <div class="tags">
15108
15109
15110         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
15111
15112
15113       </div>
15114     </div>
15115     <div class="padding"></div>
15116
15117     <div class="entry">
15118       <div class="title">
15119         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
15120       </div>
15121       <div class="date">
15122          7th March 2012
15123       </div>
15124       <div class="body">
15125         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15126
15127 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15128 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15129 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15130 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15131 download as a
15132 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15133 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15134
15135 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15136   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
15137     <p>Download video as
15138       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15139 </video></p>
15140
15141       </div>
15142       <div class="tags">
15143
15144
15145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15146
15147
15148       </div>
15149     </div>
15150     <div class="padding"></div>
15151
15152     <div class="entry">
15153       <div class="title">
15154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15155       </div>
15156       <div class="date">
15157          4th March 2012
15158       </div>
15159       <div class="body">
15160         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15161 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15162 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15163 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15164 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15165 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15166
15167       </div>
15168       <div class="tags">
15169
15170
15171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15172
15173
15174       </div>
15175     </div>
15176     <div class="padding"></div>
15177
15178     <div class="entry">
15179       <div class="title">
15180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
15181       </div>
15182       <div class="date">
15183          3rd March 2012
15184       </div>
15185       <div class="body">
15186         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15187 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15188 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15189 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15190 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15191 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15192 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15193 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15194 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15195 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15196 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15197 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15198 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15199 year...</p>
15200
15201 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15202 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15203 name,
15204 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15205 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15206 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15207 mean). I've been following
15208 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15209 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15210 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15211 Check it out. :)</p>
15212
15213       </div>
15214       <div class="tags">
15215
15216
15217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15218
15219
15220       </div>
15221     </div>
15222     <div class="padding"></div>
15223
15224     <div class="entry">
15225       <div class="title">
15226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15227       </div>
15228       <div class="date">
15229         27th February 2012
15230       </div>
15231       <div class="body">
15232         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15233 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15234 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15235 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15236 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15237 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15238 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15239
15240       </div>
15241       <div class="tags">
15242
15243
15244         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15245
15246
15247       </div>
15248     </div>
15249     <div class="padding"></div>
15250
15251     <div class="entry">
15252       <div class="title">
15253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15254       </div>
15255       <div class="date">
15256         19th February 2012
15257       </div>
15258       <div class="body">
15259         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15260 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15261 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15262 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15263 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15264 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15265 solution for your school.</p>
15266
15267       </div>
15268       <div class="tags">
15269
15270
15271         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15272
15273
15274       </div>
15275     </div>
15276     <div class="padding"></div>
15277
15278     <div class="entry">
15279       <div class="title">
15280         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
15281       </div>
15282       <div class="date">
15283         14th February 2012
15284       </div>
15285       <div class="body">
15286         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15287 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15288 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15289 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15290 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15291 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15292 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15293 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15294 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15295
15296 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15297 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15298 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15299 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15300 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15301
15302 <blockquote><pre>
15303 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15304 do
15305     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15306     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15307 done
15308 </blockquote></pre>
15309
15310 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15311 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15312
15313 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15314
15315 <blockquote><pre>
15316 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15317 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15318 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15319 </blockquote></pre>
15320
15321 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15322 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15323 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15324 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15325 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15326 mounted inside my box.</p>
15327
15328 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15329 Software RAID in the
15330 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15331 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15332 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15333 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15334 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15335 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15336
15337       </div>
15338       <div class="tags">
15339
15340
15341         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
15342
15343
15344       </div>
15345     </div>
15346     <div class="padding"></div>
15347
15348     <div class="entry">
15349       <div class="title">
15350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15351       </div>
15352       <div class="date">
15353         13th February 2012
15354       </div>
15355       <div class="body">
15356         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15357 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15358 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15359 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15360 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15361 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15362 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15363 change the global proxy setting by editing
15364 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15365 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15366
15367 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15368 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15369 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15370
15371 <blockquote><pre>
15372 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15373 {
15374    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15375        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15376        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15377       return "DIRECT";
15378    else
15379       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15380 }
15381 </pre></blockquote>
15382
15383 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15384
15385 <blockquote><pre>
15386 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15387 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15388 </pre></blockquote>
15389
15390 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15391 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15392 would be used for
15393 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15394 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15395 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15396 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15397 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15398 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15399 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15400 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15401 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15402 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15403
15404 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15405 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15406 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15407 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15408 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15409 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15410
15411 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15412 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15413 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15414 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15415 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15416 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15417 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15418 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15419 the network setup changes.</p>
15420
15421 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15422 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15423 draft</a> and a
15424 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15425 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15426
15427       </div>
15428       <div class="tags">
15429
15430
15431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15432
15433
15434       </div>
15435     </div>
15436     <div class="padding"></div>
15437
15438     <div class="entry">
15439       <div class="title">
15440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
15441       </div>
15442       <div class="date">
15443          5th February 2012
15444       </div>
15445       <div class="body">
15446         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15447 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15448 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15449 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15450 in the morning.  This is done using the
15451 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15452
15453 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15454 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15455 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15456 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15457 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15458 the
15459 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15460 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15461 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15462 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15463 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15464
15465 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15466 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15467 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15468 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15469 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15470 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15471 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15472
15473 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15474 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15475 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15476 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15477 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15478
15479       </div>
15480       <div class="tags">
15481
15482
15483         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15484
15485
15486       </div>
15487     </div>
15488     <div class="padding"></div>
15489
15490     <div class="entry">
15491       <div class="title">
15492         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15493       </div>
15494       <div class="date">
15495          4th February 2012
15496       </div>
15497       <div class="body">
15498         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15499 publish the third beta version of
15500 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15501 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15502 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15503 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15504 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15505 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15506 on the project announcement list.</p>
15507
15508 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15509 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15510
15511 <ul>
15512
15513 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15514   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15515   the installation.</li>
15516
15517 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15518   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15519
15520 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15521   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15522   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15523
15524 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15525   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15526   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15527   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15528   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15529   up to date on the system.</li>
15530
15531 </ul>
15532
15533 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15534 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15535 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15536 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15537
15538 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15539 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15540 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15541 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15542 will see you there?</p>
15543
15544       </div>
15545       <div class="tags">
15546
15547
15548         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15549
15550
15551       </div>
15552     </div>
15553     <div class="padding"></div>
15554
15555     <div class="entry">
15556       <div class="title">
15557         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15558       </div>
15559       <div class="date">
15560         27th January 2012
15561       </div>
15562       <div class="body">
15563         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15564 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15565 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15566 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15567 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15568 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15569 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15570
15571 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15572 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15573 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15574 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15575 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15576 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15577 not taken care of by this.</p>
15578
15579 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15580 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15581 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15582 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15583 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15584 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15585 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15586 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15587 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15588 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15589 firmware packages.</p>
15590
15591 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15592 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15593 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15594 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15595 initrd with extra firmware, the
15596 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15597 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15598 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15599
15600 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15601 network cards working.  For this,
15602 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15603 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15604 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15605
15606 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15607 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15608 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15609
15610 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15611 try.</p>
15612
15613       </div>
15614       <div class="tags">
15615
15616
15617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15618
15619
15620       </div>
15621     </div>
15622     <div class="padding"></div>
15623
15624     <div class="entry">
15625       <div class="title">
15626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15627       </div>
15628       <div class="date">
15629         25th January 2012
15630       </div>
15631       <div class="body">
15632         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15633 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15634 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15635 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15636 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15637
15638 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15639 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15640 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15641 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15642 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15643 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15644 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15645 will look similar to this:</p>
15646
15647 <p><blockquote><pre>
15648 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15649 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15650 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
15651
15652 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15653
15654 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15655 enter password: *******
15656 %
15657 </pre></blockquote></p>
15658
15659 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15660 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15661 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15662 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15663 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15664 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15665 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15666 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15667 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15668 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15669 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15670 automatically.</p>
15671
15672 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15673 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15674
15675 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15676 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15677 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15678
15679       </div>
15680       <div class="tags">
15681
15682
15683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
15684
15685
15686       </div>
15687     </div>
15688     <div class="padding"></div>
15689
15690     <div class="entry">
15691       <div class="title">
15692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
15693       </div>
15694       <div class="date">
15695         10th January 2012
15696       </div>
15697       <div class="body">
15698         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15699 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15700 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15701 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15702 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15703 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15704 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15705 first time.</p>
15706
15707 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15708 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15709 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15710 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15711
15712 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15713 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15714 new setting.</p>
15715
15716 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15717 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15718 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15719
15720       </div>
15721       <div class="tags">
15722
15723
15724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
15725
15726
15727       </div>
15728     </div>
15729     <div class="padding"></div>
15730
15731     <div class="entry">
15732       <div class="title">
15733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
15734       </div>
15735       <div class="date">
15736          7th January 2012
15737       </div>
15738       <div class="body">
15739         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15740 the second beta version of
15741 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15742 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15743 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15744 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15745 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15746 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15747 on the project announcement list.</p>
15748
15749       </div>
15750       <div class="tags">
15751
15752
15753         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15754
15755
15756       </div>
15757     </div>
15758     <div class="padding"></div>
15759
15760     <div class="entry">
15761       <div class="title">
15762         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
15763       </div>
15764       <div class="date">
15765          3rd January 2012
15766       </div>
15767       <div class="body">
15768         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15769 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15770 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15771 interesting.</p>
15772
15773 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15774 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15775 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15776 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15777 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15778 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15779 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15780
15781 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15782 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15783 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15784 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15785 because I was typing.</P>
15786
15787 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15788 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15789 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15790 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15791 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15792 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15793 generate entropy.</p>
15794
15795 <p>The fix is in
15796 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15797 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15798 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15799 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15800
15801       </div>
15802       <div class="tags">
15803
15804
15805         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15806
15807
15808       </div>
15809     </div>
15810     <div class="padding"></div>
15811
15812     <div class="entry">
15813       <div class="title">
15814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15815       </div>
15816       <div class="date">
15817         21st November 2011
15818       </div>
15819       <div class="body">
15820         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15821 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15822 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15823 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15824 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15825 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15826 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15827 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15828 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15829 the tools to do so.</p>
15830
15831 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15832 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15833 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15834 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15835
15836 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15837 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15838 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15839 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15840 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15841 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15842 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15843 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15844
15845 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15846 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15847 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15848
15849 <p><pre>
15850 #!/usr/bin/perl
15851 use strict;
15852 use warnings;
15853 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15854 BEGIN {
15855     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15856     my %rhelmodules = (
15857         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15858         );
15859     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15860         eval "use $module;";
15861         if ($@) {
15862             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15863             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15864             eval "use $module;";
15865         }
15866     }
15867 }
15868 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15869
15870 upgrade_dell();
15871
15872 exit 0;
15873
15874 sub run_firmware_script {
15875     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15876     unless ($script) {
15877         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15878         exit 1
15879     }
15880     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15881
15882     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15883         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15884     } else {
15885         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15886     }
15887 }
15888
15889 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15890     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15891     # Run firmware packages
15892     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15893         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15894         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15895         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15896             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15897             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15898         }
15899         closedir $dh;
15900     }
15901 }
15902
15903 sub download {
15904     my $url = shift;
15905     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15906     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15907 }
15908
15909 sub upgrade_dell {
15910     my @dirs;
15911     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15912     chomp $product;
15913
15914     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15915
15916         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15917         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15918
15919         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15920             CLEANUP => 1
15921             );
15922         chdir($tmpdir);
15923         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15924         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15925         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15926         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15927         my $fwopts = "-q";
15928         if (@paths) {
15929             for my $url (@paths) {
15930                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15931             }
15932             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15933         } else {
15934             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15935             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15936         }
15937         chdir('/');
15938     } else {
15939         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15940         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15941     }
15942 }
15943
15944 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15945     my $path = shift;
15946     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15947     download($url);
15948 }
15949
15950 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15951 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15952 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15953 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15954     my $filename = shift;
15955
15956     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15957     chomp $product;
15958     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15959
15960     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15961
15962     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15963     my @paths;
15964     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15965         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15966         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15967         my $oscode;
15968         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15969             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15970         } else {
15971             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15972         }
15973         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15974         {
15975             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15976         }
15977     }
15978     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15979         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15980
15981         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15982         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15983
15984         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15985         for my $path (@paths) {
15986             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15987                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15988             }
15989         }
15990     }
15991     return @paths;
15992 }
15993 </pre>
15994
15995 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15996 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15997 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15998 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15999 outdated.</p>
16000
16001       </div>
16002       <div class="tags">
16003
16004
16005         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16006
16007
16008       </div>
16009     </div>
16010     <div class="padding"></div>
16011
16012     <div class="entry">
16013       <div class="title">
16014         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
16015       </div>
16016       <div class="date">
16017          7th October 2011
16018       </div>
16019       <div class="body">
16020         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
16021 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
16022 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
16023 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
16024 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
16025 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
16026 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
16027 models.</p>
16028
16029 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
16030 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
16031 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
16032 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
16033
16034 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
16035 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
16036 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
16037 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
16038 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
16039 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
16040 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
16041 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
16042 distributed.</p>
16043
16044 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
16045
16046 <ul>
16047
16048 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
16049   other relevant equipment.</li>
16050
16051 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
16052
16053 </ul>
16054
16055 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
16056 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
16057 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
16058 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
16059 books available.</p>
16060
16061 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
16062 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
16063 libraries. :)</p>
16064
16065       </div>
16066       <div class="tags">
16067
16068
16069         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
16070
16071
16072       </div>
16073     </div>
16074     <div class="padding"></div>
16075
16076     <div class="entry">
16077       <div class="title">
16078         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
16079       </div>
16080       <div class="date">
16081         17th September 2011
16082       </div>
16083       <div class="body">
16084         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16085 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16086 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16087 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16088 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16089 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16090 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16091 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16092
16093 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16094
16095 <blockquote><pre>
16096 #!/bin/sh
16097 # apt-get install lsdvd
16098 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16099 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16100 </pre></blockquote>
16101
16102 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16103 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16104 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16105 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16106
16107 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16108 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16109 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16110 back as an ISO.
16111
16112 <blockquote><pre>
16113 #!/bin/sh
16114 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16115 set -e
16116 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16117 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16118 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16119 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16120 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16121 </pre></blockquote>
16122
16123 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16124
16125 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16126 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16127 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16128 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16129 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16130
16131 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16132 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16133 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16134 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16135 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16136 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16137
16138       </div>
16139       <div class="tags">
16140
16141
16142         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16143
16144
16145       </div>
16146     </div>
16147     <div class="padding"></div>
16148
16149     <div class="entry">
16150       <div class="title">
16151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
16152       </div>
16153       <div class="date">
16154          4th August 2011
16155       </div>
16156       <div class="body">
16157         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16158 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16159 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16160 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16161 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16162 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16163 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16164 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16165 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16166
16167 <p><blockquote>
16168 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16169 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16170 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16171 </blockquote></p>
16172
16173 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16174 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16175 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16176 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16177 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16178 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16179 hard to explain.</p>
16180
16181 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16182 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16183 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16184 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16185 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16186 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16187 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16188 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16189 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16190 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16191 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16192 mode).</p>
16193
16194 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16195 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16196 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16197 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16198 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16199 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16200 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16201 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16202 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16203
16204 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16205 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16206 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16207 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16208 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16209 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16210 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16211 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16212
16213 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16214 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16215 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16216
16217       </div>
16218       <div class="tags">
16219
16220
16221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16222
16223
16224       </div>
16225     </div>
16226     <div class="padding"></div>
16227
16228     <div class="entry">
16229       <div class="title">
16230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
16231       </div>
16232       <div class="date">
16233         30th July 2011
16234       </div>
16235       <div class="body">
16236         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16237 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16238 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16239 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16240 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16241 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16242 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16243 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16244 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16245 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16246 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16247 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16248 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16249
16250 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16251 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16252 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16253 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16254 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16255 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16256 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16257 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16258 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16259
16260 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16261 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16262 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16263 is presented.</p>
16264
16265 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16266 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16267 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16268 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16269 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16270 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16271 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16272 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16273 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16274 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16275 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16276 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16277 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16278 find time to push this forward.</p>
16279
16280       </div>
16281       <div class="tags">
16282
16283
16284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16285
16286
16287       </div>
16288     </div>
16289     <div class="padding"></div>
16290
16291     <div class="entry">
16292       <div class="title">
16293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
16294       </div>
16295       <div class="date">
16296         29th July 2011
16297       </div>
16298       <div class="body">
16299         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16300 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16301 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16302 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16303 issues.</p>
16304
16305 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16306 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16307 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16308
16309 <ol>
16310
16311 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16312 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16313 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16314 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16315 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16316 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16317 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16318 Debian.</li>
16319
16320 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16321 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16322 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16323 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16324 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16325 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16326 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16327 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16328 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16329 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16330 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16331 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16332 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16333
16334 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16335 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16336 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16337 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16338 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16339 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16340 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16341 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16342 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16343 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16344
16345 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16346 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16347 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16348 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16349 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16350 latter behaviour.</li>
16351
16352 </ol>
16353
16354 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16355 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16356 it do not matter much.</p>
16357
16358 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16359 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16360 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16361
16362       </div>
16363       <div class="tags">
16364
16365
16366         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16367
16368
16369       </div>
16370     </div>
16371     <div class="padding"></div>
16372
16373     <div class="entry">
16374       <div class="title">
16375         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
16376       </div>
16377       <div class="date">
16378         26th July 2011
16379       </div>
16380       <div class="body">
16381         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16382 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16383 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16384 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16385 security support for a few years.</p>
16386
16387 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16388 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16389 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16390 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16391 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16392 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16393 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16394 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16395 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16396 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16397 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16398 easier in the future.</p>
16399
16400 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16401 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16402 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16403 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16404 do not have time for.</p>
16405
16406       </div>
16407       <div class="tags">
16408
16409
16410         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
16411
16412
16413       </div>
16414     </div>
16415     <div class="padding"></div>
16416
16417     <div class="entry">
16418       <div class="title">
16419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16420       </div>
16421       <div class="date">
16422         20th June 2011
16423       </div>
16424       <div class="body">
16425         <p>Reading
16426 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16427 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16428 parts of the
16429 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16430 and
16431 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16432 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16433 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16434 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16435
16436       </div>
16437       <div class="tags">
16438
16439
16440         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
16441
16442
16443       </div>
16444     </div>
16445     <div class="padding"></div>
16446
16447     <div class="entry">
16448       <div class="title">
16449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
16450       </div>
16451       <div class="date">
16452         30th April 2011
16453       </div>
16454       <div class="body">
16455         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16456 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16457 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16458 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16459 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16460 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16461 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16462 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16463 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16464 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16465
16466 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16467 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16468 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16469 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16470 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16471
16472       </div>
16473       <div class="tags">
16474
16475
16476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
16477
16478
16479       </div>
16480     </div>
16481     <div class="padding"></div>
16482
16483     <div class="entry">
16484       <div class="title">
16485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
16486       </div>
16487       <div class="date">
16488         29th April 2011
16489       </div>
16490       <div class="body">
16491         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16492 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16493 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16494 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16495 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16496 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16497 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16498 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16499 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16500 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16501 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16502 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16503 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16504
16505 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16506 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16507 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16508 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16509 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16510 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16511 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16512 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16513 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16514 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16515 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16516 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16517 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16518
16519 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16520 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16521 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16522 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16523 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16524 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16525 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16526 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16527 it.</p>
16528
16529 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16530 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16531 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16532 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16533 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16534 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16535 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16536
16537 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16538 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16539 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16540 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16541 and range= options.</p>
16542
16543 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16544 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16545 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16546 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16547 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16548 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16549 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16550 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16551 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16552 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16553
16554 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16555 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16556 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16557 discussions instead of only
16558 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16559 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16560 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16561 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16562 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16563 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16564
16565       </div>
16566       <div class="tags">
16567
16568
16569         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
16570
16571
16572       </div>
16573     </div>
16574     <div class="padding"></div>
16575
16576     <div class="entry">
16577       <div class="title">
16578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16579       </div>
16580       <div class="date">
16581          6th April 2011
16582       </div>
16583       <div class="body">
16584         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16585 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16586 A few days ago the project
16587 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16588 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16589 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16590 into Gnash.</p>
16591
16592       </div>
16593       <div class="tags">
16594
16595
16596         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16597
16598
16599       </div>
16600     </div>
16601     <div class="padding"></div>
16602
16603     <div class="entry">
16604       <div class="title">
16605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
16606       </div>
16607       <div class="date">
16608          3rd April 2011
16609       </div>
16610       <div class="body">
16611         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16612 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16613 update in English.</p>
16614
16615 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16616 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16617 of the British service
16618 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16619 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16620 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16621 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16622 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16623 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16624 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16625 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16626 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16627 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16628 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16629 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16630 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16631
16632 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16633 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16634 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16635 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16636 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16637 public infrastructure.</p>
16638
16639 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16640 such service?</p>
16641
16642       </div>
16643       <div class="tags">
16644
16645
16646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
16647
16648
16649       </div>
16650     </div>
16651     <div class="padding"></div>
16652
16653     <div class="entry">
16654       <div class="title">
16655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
16656       </div>
16657       <div class="date">
16658         28th January 2011
16659       </div>
16660       <div class="body">
16661         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16662 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16663 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16664 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16665 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16666 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16667 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16668 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16669 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16670 out which security holes were present in our free software
16671 collection.</p>
16672
16673 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16674 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16675 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16676 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16677 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16678 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16679 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16680 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16681 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16682 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16683 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16684 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16685 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16686 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16687 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16688 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16689
16690 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16691 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16692 check out, one could look up
16693 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
16694 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16695 The most recent one is
16696 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16697 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16698 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16699
16700 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16701 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16702 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16703 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16704 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16705 security issues out.</p>
16706
16707 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16708 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16709 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16710 RHEL is providing
16711 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16712 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16713 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16714
16715 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16716 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16717 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16718 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16719 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16720 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16721 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16722 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16723 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16724 established soon.</p>
16725
16726 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16727 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16728 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16729 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16730 for their packages.</p>
16731
16732       </div>
16733       <div class="tags">
16734
16735
16736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16737
16738
16739       </div>
16740     </div>
16741     <div class="padding"></div>
16742
16743     <div class="entry">
16744       <div class="title">
16745         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
16746       </div>
16747       <div class="date">
16748         23rd January 2011
16749       </div>
16750       <div class="body">
16751         <p>In the
16752 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16753 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16754 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16755 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16756 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16757 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16758 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16759 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16760 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16761 one of my machines like this:</p>
16762
16763 <pre>
16764 loaded modules:
16765 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16766 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16767 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16768 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16769 10de:03ec pata_amd
16770 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16771 1022:1103 k8temp
16772 109e:036e bttv
16773 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16774 11ab:4364 sky2
16775 </pre>
16776
16777 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16778 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16779
16780 <pre>
16781 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16782     echo loaded pci modules:
16783     (
16784         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16785         for address in * ; do
16786             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16787                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16788                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16789                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16790                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16791                     echo "$id $module"
16792                 fi
16793             fi
16794         done
16795     )
16796     echo
16797 fi
16798 </pre>
16799
16800 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16801 mappings:</p>
16802
16803 <pre>
16804 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16805     echo loaded usb modules:
16806     (
16807         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16808         for address in * ; do
16809             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16810                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16811                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16812                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16813                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16814                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16815                         echo "$id $module"
16816                     fi
16817                 fi
16818             fi
16819         done
16820     )
16821     echo
16822 fi
16823 </pre>
16824
16825 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16826 well.</p>
16827
16828       </div>
16829       <div class="tags">
16830
16831
16832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16833
16834
16835       </div>
16836     </div>
16837     <div class="padding"></div>
16838
16839     <div class="entry">
16840       <div class="title">
16841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
16842       </div>
16843       <div class="date">
16844         16th January 2011
16845       </div>
16846       <div class="body">
16847         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16848 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16849 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16850 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16851 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16852 the Wikipedia article on
16853 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16854 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16855 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16856 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16857 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16858 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16859 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16860 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16861 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16862 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16863 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16864 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16865
16866 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16867 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16868 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16869 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16870 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16871 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16872 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16873 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16874 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16875 from last week</a>.</p>
16876
16877 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16878 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16879 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16880 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16881 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16882 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16883 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16884
16885 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16886 available from
16887 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16888 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16889 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16890
16891 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16892 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16893 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16894 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16895
16896       </div>
16897       <div class="tags">
16898
16899
16900         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16901
16902
16903       </div>
16904     </div>
16905     <div class="padding"></div>
16906
16907     <div class="entry">
16908       <div class="title">
16909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
16910       </div>
16911       <div class="date">
16912         12th January 2011
16913       </div>
16914       <div class="body">
16915         <p>Today I discovered
16916 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16917 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16918 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16919 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16920 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16921 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16922 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16923 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16924 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16925 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16926 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16927 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16928 on the Google announcement is available from
16929 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16930 A good read. :)</p>
16931
16932 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16933 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16934 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16935 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16936 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16937 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16938 browsers support H.264, and others support
16939 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16940 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16941 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16942 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16943 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16944 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16945 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16946 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16947
16948 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16949 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16950 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16951 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16952 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16953 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16954 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16955
16956 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16957 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16958 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16959 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16960 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16961 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16962 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16963
16964 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16965 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16966 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16967 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16968 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16969 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16970 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16971
16972 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16973 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16974 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16975 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16976 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16977 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16978 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16979 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16980 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16981 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16982 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16983 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16984 I guess time will tell.</p>
16985
16986 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16987 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16988 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16989
16990       </div>
16991       <div class="tags">
16992
16993
16994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16995
16996
16997       </div>
16998     </div>
16999     <div class="padding"></div>
17000
17001     <div class="entry">
17002       <div class="title">
17003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
17004       </div>
17005       <div class="date">
17006         30th December 2010
17007       </div>
17008       <div class="body">
17009         <p>After trying to
17010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
17011 Ogg Theora</a> to
17012 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
17013 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
17014 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
17015 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
17016 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
17017 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
17018 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
17019
17020 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
17021 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
17022 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
17023 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
17024 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
17025 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
17026 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
17027
17028 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
17029 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
17030
17031       </div>
17032       <div class="tags">
17033
17034
17035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17036
17037
17038       </div>
17039     </div>
17040     <div class="padding"></div>
17041
17042     <div class="entry">
17043       <div class="title">
17044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
17045       </div>
17046       <div class="date">
17047         27th December 2010
17048       </div>
17049       <div class="body">
17050         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
17051 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
17052 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
17053 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
17054 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
17055 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
17056 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
17057 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
17058
17059 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
17060 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
17061 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
17062 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
17063 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
17064 page</a>.</p>
17065
17066 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
17067 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
17068 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
17069 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
17070 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
17071 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
17072 specification on equal terms.</p>
17073
17074 <blockquote>
17075
17076 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
17077 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
17078 open standard:</p>
17079
17080 <ul>
17081
17082 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17083 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17084 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17085 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17086
17087 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17088 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17089 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17090 nominal fee.</li>
17091
17092 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17093 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17094 free basis.</li>
17095
17096 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17097
17098 </ul>
17099 </blockquote>
17100
17101 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17102 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17103 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17104 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17105 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17106 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17107 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17108
17109 <blockquote>
17110
17111 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17112
17113 <ol>
17114
17115 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17116 tilgængelig.</li>
17117
17118 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17119 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17120
17121 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17122 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17123
17124 </ol>
17125
17126 </blockquote>
17127
17128 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17129 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17130
17131 <blockquote>
17132
17133 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17134
17135 <ol>
17136
17137 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17138 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17139
17140 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17141 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17142 Standard themselves;</li>
17143
17144 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17145 any party or in any business model;</li>
17146
17147 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17148 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17149 parties;</li>
17150
17151 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17152 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17153 parties.</li>
17154
17155 </ol>
17156
17157 </blockquote>
17158
17159 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17160 its
17161 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17162 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17163
17164 <blockquote>
17165 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17166
17167 <ul>
17168
17169 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17170   democratic:
17171
17172          <ul>
17173
17174          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17175             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17176             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17177             and managed.</li>
17178
17179          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17180             method, can be changed through input from all
17181             participants.</li>
17182
17183          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17184             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17185
17186          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17187             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17188
17189          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17190             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17191             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17192
17193          </ul>
17194
17195 </li>
17196
17197 </ul>
17198
17199 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17200 <ul>
17201
17202 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17203   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17204   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17205   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17206   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17207
17208 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17209   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17210
17211 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17212   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17213   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17214   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17215   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17216   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17217   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17218   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17219   intended to function.</li>
17220
17221 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17222   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17223   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17224
17225 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17226   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17227   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17228   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17229   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17230   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17231   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17232   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17233
17234       <ul>
17235
17236       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17237         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17238         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17239
17240       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17241         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17242         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17243         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17244
17245       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17246         licensor</li>
17247
17248       </ul>
17249 </li>
17250
17251 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17252   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17253   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17254
17255 </ul>
17256
17257 </blockquote>
17258
17259 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17260 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17261 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17262 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17263 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17264 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17265 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17266 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17267 Standards.</p>
17268
17269       </div>
17270       <div class="tags">
17271
17272
17273         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17274
17275
17276       </div>
17277     </div>
17278     <div class="padding"></div>
17279
17280     <div class="entry">
17281       <div class="title">
17282         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
17283       </div>
17284       <div class="date">
17285         25th December 2010
17286       </div>
17287       <div class="body">
17288         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17289 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17290
17291 <blockquote>
17292
17293 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17294 as follows:</p>
17295
17296 <ol>
17297
17298 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17299 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17300 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17301
17302 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17303 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17304 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17305 parties.</li>
17306
17307 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17308 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17309 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17310
17311 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17312 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17313
17314 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17315
17316 </ol>
17317
17318 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17319 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17320 products based on the standard.</p>
17321 </blockquote>
17322
17323 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17324 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17325 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17326 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17327 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17328 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17329 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17330 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17331
17332 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17333
17334 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17335 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17336 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17337 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17338 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17339 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17340 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17341 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17342 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17343 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17344 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17345 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17346 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17347 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17348
17349 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17350
17351 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17352 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17353 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17354 documentation indicating this.</p>
17355
17356 <p>According to
17357 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17358 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17359 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17360 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17361 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17362 report is correct.</p>
17363
17364 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17365
17366 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17367 container format</a> and both the
17368 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17369 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17370 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17371
17372 <blockquote>
17373
17374 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17375 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17376 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17377 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17378 specification compliance.
17379
17380 </blockquote>
17381
17382 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17383 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17384 this is the term:<p>
17385
17386 <blockquote>
17387
17388 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17389 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17390 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17391 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17392 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17393 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17394 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17395 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17396 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17397 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17398 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17399 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17400
17401 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17402 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17403 </blockquote>
17404
17405 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17406 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17407 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17408 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17409 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17410
17411 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17412
17413 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17414 Theora format.
17415 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17416 and
17417 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17418 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17419 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17420 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17421 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17422 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17423 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17424 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17425
17426 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17427
17428 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17429
17430 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17431
17432 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17433 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17434 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17435 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17436 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17437 this.</p>
17438
17439 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17440 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17441
17442       </div>
17443       <div class="tags">
17444
17445
17446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17447
17448
17449       </div>
17450     </div>
17451     <div class="padding"></div>
17452
17453     <div class="entry">
17454       <div class="title">
17455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
17456       </div>
17457       <div class="date">
17458         25th December 2010
17459       </div>
17460       <div class="body">
17461         <p>A few days ago
17462 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17463 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17464 2.0 of
17465 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17466 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17467 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17468 Nothing very surprising there, given
17469 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17470 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17471 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17472 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17473 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17474 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17475 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17476 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17477 standard definition from its content.</p>
17478
17479 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17480 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17481 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17482 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17483 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17484 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17485 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17486 background information about that story is available in
17487 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17488 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17489
17490 <blockquote>
17491 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17492 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17493 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17494
17495 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17496
17497 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
17498
17499 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
17500
17501 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
17502
17503 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
17504
17505 <p>
17506 <ul>
17507 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17508 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17509 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17510 </ul>
17511 </p>
17512
17513 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
17514
17515 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
17516
17517 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
17518
17519 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
17520
17521 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
17522
17523
17524 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17525 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17526 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17527 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17528 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17529 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17530
17531 </p>
17532
17533 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
17534
17535 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
17536
17537 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17538
17539 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
17540
17541 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
17542
17543 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
17544
17545 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
17546
17547 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
17548
17549 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
17550
17551 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
17552
17553 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
17554
17555 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
17556
17557 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
17558
17559 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
17560
17561 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
17562
17563 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
17564
17565 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
17566
17567 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
17568
17569 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
17570
17571 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
17572
17573 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
17574
17575 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
17576
17577 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
17578
17579 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
17580
17581 <p>On security:</p>
17582
17583 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
17584
17585 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
17586
17587 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
17588
17589 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17590
17591 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
17592
17593 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17594
17595 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
17596
17597 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
17598
17599 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
17600
17601 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
17602
17603 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
17604
17605 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
17606
17607 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
17608
17609 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
17610
17611 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
17612
17613 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
17614
17615 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
17616
17617 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
17618
17619 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
17620
17621 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
17622
17623 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
17624
17625 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
17626
17627 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
17628
17629 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
17630
17631 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
17632
17633 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
17634
17635 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
17636
17637 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
17638
17639 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
17640
17641 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
17642
17643 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
17644
17645 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
17646
17647 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
17648
17649 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
17650
17651 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
17652
17653 <p>Cordially,<br>
17654 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17655 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17656 </blockquote>
17657
17658       </div>
17659       <div class="tags">
17660
17661
17662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17663
17664
17665       </div>
17666     </div>
17667     <div class="padding"></div>
17668
17669     <div class="entry">
17670       <div class="title">
17671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17672       </div>
17673       <div class="date">
17674         25th December 2010
17675       </div>
17676       <div class="body">
17677         <p>Half a year ago I
17678 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17679 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17680 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17681 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17682
17683 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17684 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17685 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17686 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17687 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17688 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17689 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17690
17691       </div>
17692       <div class="tags">
17693
17694
17695         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
17696
17697
17698       </div>
17699     </div>
17700     <div class="padding"></div>
17701
17702     <div class="entry">
17703       <div class="title">
17704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
17705       </div>
17706       <div class="date">
17707         22nd December 2010
17708       </div>
17709       <div class="body">
17710         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17711 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17712 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17713 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17714 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17715 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17716 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17717 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17718 university.</p>
17719
17720 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17721 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17722 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17723 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17724 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17725 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17726 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17727 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17728
17729 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17730 I perform on a new model.</p>
17731
17732 <ul>
17733
17734 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17735 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17736 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17737
17738 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17739 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17740
17741 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17742 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17743 reported by the program.</li>
17744
17745 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17746 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17747 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17748 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17749 normally test this by playing
17750 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17751 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17752
17753 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17754 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17755
17756 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17757 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17758
17759 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17760 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17761
17762 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17763 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17764 few.</li>
17765
17766 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17767 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17768 notice this.</li>
17769
17770 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17771 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17772 resume.</li>
17773
17774 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17775 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17776 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17777 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17778 not.</li>
17779
17780 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17781 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17782 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17783 existence.</li>
17784
17785 </ul>
17786
17787 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17788 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17789 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17790 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17791 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17792 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17793 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17794 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17795
17796       </div>
17797       <div class="tags">
17798
17799
17800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17801
17802
17803       </div>
17804     </div>
17805     <div class="padding"></div>
17806
17807     <div class="entry">
17808       <div class="title">
17809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17810       </div>
17811       <div class="date">
17812         11th December 2010
17813       </div>
17814       <div class="body">
17815         <p>As I continue to explore
17816 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17817 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17818 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17819
17820 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17821 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17822 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17823 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17824 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17825 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17826 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17827 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17828 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17829 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17830 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17831 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17832 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17833 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17834 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17835 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17836 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17837 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17838 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17839 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17840
17841 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17842 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17843 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17844 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17845 If the Skolelinux foundation
17846 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17847 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17848 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17849 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17850 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17851 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17852 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17853 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17854
17855 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17856 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17857 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17858 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17859 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17860 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17861 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17862 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17863 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17864 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17865 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17866 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17867 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17868 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17869 currencies.</p>
17870
17871 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17872 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17873 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17874 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17875 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17876 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17877 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17878 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17879 BitCoins.  Check out
17880 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17881 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17882 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17883 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17884 yet.</p>
17885
17886 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17887 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17888 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17889 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17890 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17891
17892       </div>
17893       <div class="tags">
17894
17895
17896         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17897
17898
17899       </div>
17900     </div>
17901     <div class="padding"></div>
17902
17903     <div class="entry">
17904       <div class="title">
17905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
17906       </div>
17907       <div class="date">
17908         10th December 2010
17909       </div>
17910       <div class="body">
17911         <p>With this weeks lawless
17912 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17913 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17914 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17915 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17916 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17917 A blog post from
17918 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17919 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17920 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17921 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17922 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17923 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17924 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17925
17926 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17927 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17928 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17929 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17930 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17931 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17932 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17933 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17934 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17935 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17936
17937 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17938 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17939 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17940 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17941 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17942 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17943 you can even get
17944 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17945 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17946 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17947 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17948
17949 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17950 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17951 donations to the address
17952 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17953
17954       </div>
17955       <div class="tags">
17956
17957
17958         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
17959
17960
17961       </div>
17962     </div>
17963     <div class="padding"></div>
17964
17965     <div class="entry">
17966       <div class="title">
17967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
17968       </div>
17969       <div class="date">
17970          9th December 2010
17971       </div>
17972       <div class="body">
17973         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17974 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17975 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17976 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17977 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17978 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17979 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17980 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17981 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17982 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17983 operational.</p>
17984
17985 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17986 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17987 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17988 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17989 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17990 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17991 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17992
17993       </div>
17994       <div class="tags">
17995
17996
17997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
17998
17999
18000       </div>
18001     </div>
18002     <div class="padding"></div>
18003
18004     <div class="entry">
18005       <div class="title">
18006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
18007       </div>
18008       <div class="date">
18009         29th November 2010
18010       </div>
18011       <div class="body">
18012         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
18013 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
18014 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
18015 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
18016 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
18017 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
18018
18019 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
18020 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
18021 will hold its
18022 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
18023 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
18024 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
18025 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
18026 vote this year.</p>
18027
18028       </div>
18029       <div class="tags">
18030
18031
18032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18033
18034
18035       </div>
18036     </div>
18037     <div class="padding"></div>
18038
18039     <div class="entry">
18040       <div class="title">
18041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
18042       </div>
18043       <div class="date">
18044         27th November 2010
18045       </div>
18046       <div class="body">
18047         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
18048 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
18049 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
18050 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
18051 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
18052 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
18053 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
18054 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
18055
18056 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
18057 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
18058 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
18059 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
18060 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
18061 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
18062 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
18063 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
18064 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
18065 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
18066 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
18067
18068 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
18069 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
18070 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
18071 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
18072 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
18073 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
18074 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
18075 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
18076 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
18077 what is going on.</p>
18078
18079       </div>
18080       <div class="tags">
18081
18082
18083         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18084
18085
18086       </div>
18087     </div>
18088     <div class="padding"></div>
18089
18090     <div class="entry">
18091       <div class="title">
18092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
18093       </div>
18094       <div class="date">
18095         22nd November 2010
18096       </div>
18097       <div class="body">
18098         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18099 upgrade testing of the
18100 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18101 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18102 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18103 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18104
18105 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18106
18107 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18108
18109 <blockquote><p>
18110   apache2.2-bin
18111   aptdaemon
18112   baobab
18113   binfmt-support
18114   browser-plugin-gnash
18115   cheese-common
18116   cli-common
18117   cups-pk-helper
18118   dmz-cursor-theme
18119   empathy
18120   empathy-common
18121   freedesktop-sound-theme
18122   freeglut3
18123   gconf-defaults-service
18124   gdm-themes
18125   gedit-plugins
18126   geoclue
18127   geoclue-hostip
18128   geoclue-localnet
18129   geoclue-manual
18130   geoclue-yahoo
18131   gnash
18132   gnash-common
18133   gnome
18134   gnome-backgrounds
18135   gnome-cards-data
18136   gnome-codec-install
18137   gnome-core
18138   gnome-desktop-environment
18139   gnome-disk-utility
18140   gnome-screenshot
18141   gnome-search-tool
18142   gnome-session-canberra
18143   gnome-system-log
18144   gnome-themes-extras
18145   gnome-themes-more
18146   gnome-user-share
18147   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18148   gstreamer0.10-tools
18149   gtk2-engines
18150   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18151   gtk2-engines-smooth
18152   hamster-applet
18153   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18154   libapr1
18155   libaprutil1
18156   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18157   libaprutil1-ldap
18158   libart2.0-cil
18159   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18160   libboost-python1.42.0
18161   libboost-thread1.42.0
18162   libchamplain-0.4-0
18163   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18164   libcheese-gtk18
18165   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18166   libcryptui0
18167   libdiscid0
18168   libelf1
18169   libepc-1.0-2
18170   libepc-common
18171   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18172   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18173   libfreerdp0
18174   libgconf2.0-cil
18175   libgdata-common
18176   libgdata7
18177   libgdu-gtk0
18178   libgee2
18179   libgeoclue0
18180   libgexiv2-0
18181   libgif4
18182   libglade2.0-cil
18183   libglib2.0-cil
18184   libgmime2.4-cil
18185   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18186   libgnome2.24-cil
18187   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18188   libgpod-common
18189   libgpod4
18190   libgtk2.0-cil
18191   libgtkglext1
18192   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18193   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18194   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18195   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18196   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18197   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18198   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18199   libmono-security2.0-cil
18200   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18201   libmono-system2.0-cil
18202   libmtp8
18203   libmusicbrainz3-6
18204   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18205   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18206   libopal3.6.8
18207   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18208   libpt2.6.7
18209   libpython2.6
18210   librpm1
18211   librpmio1
18212   libsdl1.2debian
18213   libsrtp0
18214   libssh-4
18215   libtelepathy-farsight0
18216   libtelepathy-glib0
18217   libtidy-0.99-0
18218   media-player-info
18219   mesa-utils
18220   mono-2.0-gac
18221   mono-gac
18222   mono-runtime
18223   nautilus-sendto
18224   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18225   p7zip-full
18226   pkg-config
18227   python-aptdaemon
18228   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18229   python-axiom
18230   python-beautifulsoup
18231   python-bugbuddy
18232   python-clientform
18233   python-coherence
18234   python-configobj
18235   python-crypto
18236   python-cupshelpers
18237   python-elementtree
18238   python-epsilon
18239   python-evolution
18240   python-feedparser
18241   python-gdata
18242   python-gdbm
18243   python-gst0.10
18244   python-gtkglext1
18245   python-gtksourceview2
18246   python-httplib2
18247   python-louie
18248   python-mako
18249   python-markupsafe
18250   python-mechanize
18251   python-nevow
18252   python-notify
18253   python-opengl
18254   python-openssl
18255   python-pam
18256   python-pkg-resources
18257   python-pyasn1
18258   python-pysqlite2
18259   python-rdflib
18260   python-serial
18261   python-tagpy
18262   python-twisted-bin
18263   python-twisted-conch
18264   python-twisted-core
18265   python-twisted-web
18266   python-utidylib
18267   python-webkit
18268   python-xdg
18269   python-zope.interface
18270   remmina
18271   remmina-plugin-data
18272   remmina-plugin-rdp
18273   remmina-plugin-vnc
18274   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18275   rhythmbox-plugins
18276   rpm-common
18277   rpm2cpio
18278   seahorse-plugins
18279   shotwell
18280   software-center
18281   system-config-printer-udev
18282   telepathy-gabble
18283   telepathy-mission-control-5
18284   telepathy-salut
18285   tomboy
18286   totem
18287   totem-coherence
18288   totem-mozilla
18289   totem-plugins
18290   transmission-common
18291   xdg-user-dirs
18292   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18293   xserver-xephyr
18294 </p></blockquote>
18295
18296 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18297
18298 <blockquote><p>
18299   cheese
18300   ekiga
18301   eog
18302   epiphany-extensions
18303   evolution-exchange
18304   fast-user-switch-applet
18305   file-roller
18306   gcalctool
18307   gconf-editor
18308   gdm
18309   gedit
18310   gedit-common
18311   gnome-games
18312   gnome-games-data
18313   gnome-nettool
18314   gnome-system-tools
18315   gnome-themes
18316   gnuchess
18317   gucharmap
18318   guile-1.8-libs
18319   libavahi-ui0
18320   libdmx1
18321   libgalago3
18322   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18323   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18324   liblircclient0
18325   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18326   libspeexdsp1
18327   libsvga1
18328   rhythmbox
18329   seahorse
18330   sound-juicer
18331   system-config-printer
18332   totem-common
18333   transmission-gtk
18334   vinagre
18335   vino
18336 </p></blockquote>
18337
18338 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18339
18340 <blockquote><p>
18341   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18342 </p></blockquote>
18343
18344 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18345
18346 <blockquote><p>
18347 [nothing]
18348 </p></blockquote>
18349
18350 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18351
18352 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18353
18354 <blockquote><p>
18355   ksmserver
18356 </p></blockquote>
18357
18358 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18359
18360 <blockquote><p>
18361   kwin
18362   network-manager-kde
18363 </p></blockquote>
18364
18365 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18366
18367 <blockquote><p>
18368   arts
18369   dolphin
18370   freespacenotifier
18371   google-gadgets-gst
18372   google-gadgets-xul
18373   kappfinder
18374   kcalc
18375   kcharselect
18376   kde-core
18377   kde-plasma-desktop
18378   kde-standard
18379   kde-window-manager
18380   kdeartwork
18381   kdeartwork-emoticons
18382   kdeartwork-style
18383   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18384   kdebase
18385   kdebase-apps
18386   kdebase-workspace
18387   kdebase-workspace-bin
18388   kdebase-workspace-data
18389   kdeeject
18390   kdelibs
18391   kdeplasma-addons
18392   kdeutils
18393   kdewallpapers
18394   kdf
18395   kfloppy
18396   kgpg
18397   khelpcenter4
18398   kinfocenter
18399   konq-plugins-l10n
18400   konqueror-nsplugins
18401   kscreensaver
18402   kscreensaver-xsavers
18403   ktimer
18404   kwrite
18405   libgle3
18406   libkde4-ruby1.8
18407   libkonq5
18408   libkonq5-templates
18409   libnetpbm10
18410   libplasma-ruby
18411   libplasma-ruby1.8
18412   libqt4-ruby1.8
18413   marble-data
18414   marble-plugins
18415   netpbm
18416   nuvola-icon-theme
18417   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18418   plasma-desktop
18419   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18420   plasma-runners-addons
18421   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18422   plasma-scriptengine-python
18423   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18424   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18425   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18426   plasma-scriptengines
18427   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18428   plasma-widget-folderview
18429   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18430   ruby
18431   sweeper
18432   update-notifier-kde
18433   xscreensaver-data-extra
18434   xscreensaver-gl
18435   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18436   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18437 </p></blockquote>
18438
18439 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18440
18441 <blockquote><p>
18442   ark
18443   google-gadgets-common
18444   google-gadgets-qt
18445   htdig
18446   kate
18447   kdebase-bin
18448   kdebase-data
18449   kdepasswd
18450   kfind
18451   klipper
18452   konq-plugins
18453   konqueror
18454   ksysguard
18455   ksysguardd
18456   libarchive1
18457   libcln6
18458   libeet1
18459   libeina-svn-06
18460   libggadget-1.0-0b
18461   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18462   libgps19
18463   libkdecorations4
18464   libkephal4
18465   libkonq4
18466   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18467   libkscreensaver5
18468   libksgrd4
18469   libksignalplotter4
18470   libkunitconversion4
18471   libkwineffects1a
18472   libmarblewidget4
18473   libntrack-qt4-1
18474   libntrack0
18475   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18476   libplasmaclock4a
18477   libplasmagenericshell4
18478   libprocesscore4a
18479   libprocessui4a
18480   libqalculate5
18481   libqedje0a
18482   libqtruby4shared2
18483   libqzion0a
18484   libruby1.8
18485   libscim8c2a
18486   libsmokekdecore4-3
18487   libsmokekdeui4-3
18488   libsmokekfile3
18489   libsmokekhtml3
18490   libsmokekio3
18491   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18492   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18493   libsmokekparts3
18494   libsmokektexteditor3
18495   libsmokekutils3
18496   libsmokenepomuk3
18497   libsmokephonon3
18498   libsmokeplasma3
18499   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18500   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18501   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18502   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18503   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18504   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18505   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18506   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18507   libsmokeqttest4-3
18508   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18509   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18510   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18511   libsmokesolid3
18512   libsmokesoprano3
18513   libtaskmanager4a
18514   libtidy-0.99-0
18515   libweather-ion4a
18516   libxklavier16
18517   libxxf86misc1
18518   okteta
18519   oxygencursors
18520   plasma-dataengines-addons
18521   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18522   plasma-widget-lancelot
18523   plasma-widgets-addons
18524   plasma-widgets-workspace
18525   polkit-kde-1
18526   ruby1.8
18527   systemsettings
18528   update-notifier-common
18529 </p></blockquote>
18530
18531 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18532 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18533 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18534 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18535
18536       </div>
18537       <div class="tags">
18538
18539
18540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18541
18542
18543       </div>
18544     </div>
18545     <div class="padding"></div>
18546
18547     <div class="entry">
18548       <div class="title">
18549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
18550       </div>
18551       <div class="date">
18552         22nd November 2010
18553       </div>
18554       <div class="body">
18555         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18556 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18557 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18558 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18559 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18560 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18561 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18562 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18563 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18564
18565 <p>I found
18566 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18567 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18568 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18569 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18570 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18571 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18572
18573 <pre>
18574 #!/bin/sh
18575
18576 # Based on
18577 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18578
18579 set -e
18580 set -x
18581
18582 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18583     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18584     exit 1
18585 else
18586     host="$1"
18587 fi
18588
18589 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18590     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18591     exit 1
18592 fi
18593
18594 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18595 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18596 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18597 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18598
18599 img=$host.img
18600 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18601 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18602
18603 parted $img mklabel msdos
18604 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18605 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18606 parted $img set 1 boot on
18607
18608 modprobe dm-mod
18609 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18610 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18611
18612 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18613 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18614 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18615
18616 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18617 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18618 </pre>
18619
18620 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18621 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18622
18623 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18624 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18625 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18626 seem to work just fine.</p>
18627
18628       </div>
18629       <div class="tags">
18630
18631
18632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18633
18634
18635       </div>
18636     </div>
18637     <div class="padding"></div>
18638
18639     <div class="entry">
18640       <div class="title">
18641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
18642       </div>
18643       <div class="date">
18644         20th November 2010
18645       </div>
18646       <div class="body">
18647         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18648 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18649 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18650 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18651
18652 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18653 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18654 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18655
18656 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18657
18658 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18659
18660 <blockquote><p>
18661   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18662   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18663   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18664   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18665   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18666   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18667   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18668   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18669   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18670   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18671   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18672   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18673   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18674   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18675   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18676   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18677   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18678   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18679   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18680   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18681   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18682   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18683   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18684   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18685   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18686   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18687   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18688   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18689   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18690   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18691   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18692   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18693   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18694   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18695   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18696   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18697   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18698   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18699   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18700   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18701   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18702   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18703   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18704   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18705   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18706   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18707   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18708   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18709   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18710   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18711   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18712   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18713   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18714   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18715   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18716   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18717   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18718   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18719   zip
18720 </p></blockquote>
18721
18722 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18723
18724 <blockquote><p>
18725   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18726   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18727   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18728   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18729   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18730   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18731   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18732   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18733   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18734   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18735   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18736   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18737   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18738   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18739   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18740   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18741   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18742   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18743   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18744   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18745   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18746   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18747   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18748   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18749   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18750   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18751   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18752   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18753   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18754 </p></blockquote>
18755
18756 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18757
18758 <blockquote><p>
18759   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18760 </p></blockquote>
18761
18762 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18763
18764 <blockquote><p>
18765 [nothing]
18766 </p></blockquote>
18767
18768 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18769
18770 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18771
18772 <blockquote><p>
18773   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18774   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18775   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18776   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18777   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18778   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18779   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18780   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18781   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18782   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18783   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18784   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18785   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18786   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18787   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18788   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18789   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18790   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18791   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18792   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18793   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18794   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18795   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18796   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18797   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18798   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18799   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18800   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18801   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18802   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18803 </p></blockquote>
18804
18805 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18806
18807 <blockquote><p>
18808   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18809   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18810   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18811   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18812   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18813   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18814   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18815   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18816   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18817   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18818   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18819   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18820   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18821   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18822   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18823   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18824   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18825   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18826   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18827   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18828   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18829   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18830   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18831   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18832   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18833   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18834   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18835   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18836   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18837   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18838   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18839   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18840   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18841 </p></blockquote>
18842
18843 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18844
18845 <blockquote><p>
18846   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18847   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18848   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18849   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18850   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18851   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18852   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18853 </p></blockquote>
18854
18855 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18856
18857 <blockquote><p>
18858   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18859 </p></blockquote>
18860
18861       </div>
18862       <div class="tags">
18863
18864
18865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18866
18867
18868       </div>
18869     </div>
18870     <div class="padding"></div>
18871
18872     <div class="entry">
18873       <div class="title">
18874         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18875       </div>
18876       <div class="date">
18877         20th November 2010
18878       </div>
18879       <div class="body">
18880         <p>Answering
18881 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18882 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18883 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18884 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18885 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18886 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18887 releases out more often.</p>
18888
18889 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18890 I have considered setting up a <a
18891 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18892 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18893 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18894 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18895 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18896 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18897 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18898 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18899 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18900 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18901 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18902 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18903
18904       </div>
18905       <div class="tags">
18906
18907
18908         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18909
18910
18911       </div>
18912     </div>
18913     <div class="padding"></div>
18914
18915     <div class="entry">
18916       <div class="title">
18917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18918       </div>
18919       <div class="date">
18920          9th November 2010
18921       </div>
18922       <div class="body">
18923         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18924
18925 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18926 3D linked in from
18927 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18928 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18929
18930       </div>
18931       <div class="tags">
18932
18933
18934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18935
18936
18937       </div>
18938     </div>
18939     <div class="padding"></div>
18940
18941     <div class="entry">
18942       <div class="title">
18943         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
18944       </div>
18945       <div class="date">
18946          7th November 2010
18947       </div>
18948       <div class="body">
18949         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18950 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18951 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18952 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18953 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18954 working using this DVD.</p>
18955
18956 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18957 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18958 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18959 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18960 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18961 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18962 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18963
18964 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18965 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18966 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18967 Debian archive.</p>
18968
18969 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18970 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18971 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18972 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18973 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18974 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18975 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18976 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18977 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18978 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18979 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18980 free X driver should work.</p>
18981
18982 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18983 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18984 DVD more useful again.</p>
18985
18986       </div>
18987       <div class="tags">
18988
18989
18990         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
18991
18992
18993       </div>
18994     </div>
18995     <div class="padding"></div>
18996
18997     <div class="entry">
18998       <div class="title">
18999         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
19000       </div>
19001       <div class="date">
19002         24th October 2010
19003       </div>
19004       <div class="body">
19005         <p>Some updates.</p>
19006
19007 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
19008 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
19009 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
19010 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
19011 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
19012 :)</p>
19013
19014 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
19015 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
19016 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
19017 It is called
19018 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
19019 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
19020 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
19021 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
19022 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
19023 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
19024
19025 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
19026 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
19027 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
19028 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
19029 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
19030 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
19031 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
19032 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
19033 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
19034 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
19035
19036       </div>
19037       <div class="tags">
19038
19039
19040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
19041
19042
19043       </div>
19044     </div>
19045     <div class="padding"></div>
19046
19047     <div class="entry">
19048       <div class="title">
19049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
19050       </div>
19051       <div class="date">
19052         19th October 2010
19053       </div>
19054       <div class="body">
19055         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
19056 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
19057 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
19058 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
19059 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
19060 AVM2 flash files.</p>
19061
19062 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
19063 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
19064 following text:</P>
19065
19066 <p><blockquote>
19067
19068   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
19069   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
19070
19071   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
19072
19073   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
19074
19075   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
19076   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
19077   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
19078   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
19079   days. The project web page is available from
19080   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
19081   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
19082   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
19083
19084   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19085   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19086   to get this to happen.</p>
19087
19088   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19089   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19090
19091 </blockquote></p>
19092
19093 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19094 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19095 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19096 :)</p>
19097
19098       </div>
19099       <div class="tags">
19100
19101
19102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19103
19104
19105       </div>
19106     </div>
19107     <div class="padding"></div>
19108
19109     <div class="entry">
19110       <div class="title">
19111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
19112       </div>
19113       <div class="date">
19114          9th October 2010
19115       </div>
19116       <div class="body">
19117         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19118 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19119 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19120 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19121 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19122 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19123 robots.</p>
19124
19125 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19126 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19127 a few less important features too.</p>
19128
19129 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19130 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19131 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19132 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19133
19134 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19135 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19136 source or binary package:</p>
19137
19138 <p><ul>
19139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
19140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
19141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
19142 </ul></p>
19143
19144 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19145 please let me know.</p>
19146
19147       </div>
19148       <div class="tags">
19149
19150
19151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
19152
19153
19154       </div>
19155     </div>
19156     <div class="padding"></div>
19157
19158     <div class="entry">
19159       <div class="title">
19160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19161       </div>
19162       <div class="date">
19163          3rd October 2010
19164       </div>
19165       <div class="body">
19166         <p><ul>
19167
19168 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
19169 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19170
19171 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19172 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19173 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19174
19175 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19176 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19177 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19178 simple setup.
19179
19180 </ul></p>
19181
19182       </div>
19183       <div class="tags">
19184
19185
19186         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19187
19188
19189       </div>
19190     </div>
19191     <div class="padding"></div>
19192
19193     <div class="entry">
19194       <div class="title">
19195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
19196       </div>
19197       <div class="date">
19198          9th September 2010
19199       </div>
19200       <div class="body">
19201         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19202 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19203 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19204 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19205 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19206 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19207 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19208 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19209 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19210
19211 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19212 written:</p>
19213
19214 <blockquote>
19215 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19216 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19217 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19218 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19219 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19220
19221 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19222 standard.</p>
19223 </blockquote>
19224
19225 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19226 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19227 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19228 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19229
19230 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19231 read
19232 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19233 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19234 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19235 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19236 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19237 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19238 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19239 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19240 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19241
19242       </div>
19243       <div class="tags">
19244
19245
19246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19247
19248
19249       </div>
19250     </div>
19251     <div class="padding"></div>
19252
19253     <div class="entry">
19254       <div class="title">
19255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
19256       </div>
19257       <div class="date">
19258          4th September 2010
19259       </div>
19260       <div class="body">
19261         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19262 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19263 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19264 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19265 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19266 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19267 installed.</p>
19268
19269 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19270 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19271 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19272 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19273 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19274 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19275 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19276 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19277 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19278
19279 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19280 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19281 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19282 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19283 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19284 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19285 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19286 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19287 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19288 pages they want to visit.</p>
19289
19290 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19291 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19292 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19293 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19294 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19295 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19296 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19297 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19298 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19299 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19300 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19301
19302       </div>
19303       <div class="tags">
19304
19305
19306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19307
19308
19309       </div>
19310     </div>
19311     <div class="padding"></div>
19312
19313     <div class="entry">
19314       <div class="title">
19315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
19316       </div>
19317       <div class="date">
19318          1st September 2010
19319       </div>
19320       <div class="body">
19321         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19322 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19323 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19324 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19325 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19326 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19327 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19328 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19329 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19330 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19331 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19332 drive around.</p>
19333
19334 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19335 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19336
19337 <p><pre>
19338 use Spykee;
19339 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19340 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19341 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19342 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19343 $spykee->left();
19344 sleep 2;
19345 $spykee->right();
19346 sleep 2;
19347 $spykee->forward();
19348 sleep 2;
19349 $spykee->back();
19350 sleep 2;
19351 $spykee->stop();
19352 </pre></p>
19353
19354 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19355 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19356 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19357 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19358 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19359 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19360 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19361 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19362 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19363 going. :).</p>
19364
19365 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19366 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19367 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19368 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19369
19370       </div>
19371       <div class="tags">
19372
19373
19374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
19375
19376
19377       </div>
19378     </div>
19379     <div class="padding"></div>
19380
19381     <div class="entry">
19382       <div class="title">
19383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19384       </div>
19385       <div class="date">
19386         30th August 2010
19387       </div>
19388       <div class="body">
19389         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19390 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19391 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19392 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19393 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19394 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19395 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19396
19397 <pre>
19398 % ln foo bar
19399 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19400 %
19401 </pre>
19402
19403 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19404 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19405 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19406 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19407 nevertheless. :)</p>
19408
19409 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19410 git from
19411 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19412
19413       </div>
19414       <div class="tags">
19415
19416
19417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19418
19419
19420       </div>
19421     </div>
19422     <div class="padding"></div>
19423
19424     <div class="entry">
19425       <div class="title">
19426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19427       </div>
19428       <div class="date">
19429         26th August 2010
19430       </div>
19431       <div class="body">
19432         <p>My file system sematics program
19433 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19434 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19435 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19436 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19437 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19438 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19439 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19440 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19441 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19442 script:</p>
19443
19444 <pre>
19445 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19446   mode_t retval = 0;
19447   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19448   if (-1 != fd) {
19449     unlink(name);
19450     struct stat statbuf;
19451     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19452       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19453     }
19454     close(fd);
19455   }
19456   return retval;
19457 }
19458
19459 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19460 int test_umask(void) {
19461   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19462
19463   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19464   mode_t newmode;
19465   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19466     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19467            newmode);
19468   }
19469   umask(007);
19470   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19471     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19472            newmode);
19473   }
19474
19475   umask (orig_umask);
19476   return 0;
19477 }
19478
19479 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19480   [...]
19481   test_umask();
19482   return 0;
19483 }
19484 </pre>
19485
19486 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19487
19488 <pre>
19489 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19490 info: testing symlink creation
19491 info: testing subdirectory creation
19492 info: testing fcntl locking
19493   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19494   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19495   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19496   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19497   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19498   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19499 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19500 </pre>
19501
19502 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19503 result:</p>
19504
19505 <pre>
19506 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19507 info: testing symlink creation
19508 info: testing subdirectory creation
19509 info: testing fcntl locking
19510   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19511   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19512   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19513   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19514   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19515   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19516 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19517   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19518   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19519 </pre>
19520
19521 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19522 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19523 directory.</p>
19524
19525 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19526 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19527
19528 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19529 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19530 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19531
19532       </div>
19533       <div class="tags">
19534
19535
19536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19537
19538
19539       </div>
19540     </div>
19541     <div class="padding"></div>
19542
19543     <div class="entry">
19544       <div class="title">
19545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19546       </div>
19547       <div class="date">
19548         15th August 2010
19549       </div>
19550       <div class="body">
19551         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19552 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19553 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19554 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19555 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19556 long time.</p>
19557
19558       </div>
19559       <div class="tags">
19560
19561
19562         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
19563
19564
19565       </div>
19566     </div>
19567     <div class="padding"></div>
19568
19569     <div class="entry">
19570       <div class="title">
19571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19572       </div>
19573       <div class="date">
19574          9th August 2010
19575       </div>
19576       <div class="body">
19577         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19578 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19579 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19580 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19581 generated configuration.</p>
19582
19583 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19584 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19585 without any manual configuration.</p>
19586
19587 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19588 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19589 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19590 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19591 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19592 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19593 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19594 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19595 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19596 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19597 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19598 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19599 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19600 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19601 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19602 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19603 use.</p>
19604
19605 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19606 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19607 working properly out of the box:</p>
19608
19609 <ul>
19610 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19611 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19612 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19613 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19614 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19615 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19616 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19617 </ul>
19618
19619 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19620
19621 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19622 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19623 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19624 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19625 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19626
19627 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19628 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19629 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19630 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19631 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19632 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19633 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19634 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19635
19636 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19637 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19638 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19639 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19640 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19641 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19642 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19643 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19644 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19645 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19646 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19647 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19648 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19649 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19650 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19651 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19652
19653 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19654 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19655 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19656 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19657 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19658 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19659 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19660 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19661 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19662 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19663 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19664 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19665 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19666
19667 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19668 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19669 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19670 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19671 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19672 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19673 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19674 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19675 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19676 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19677 do for now. :)</p>
19678
19679 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19680 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19681 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19682 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19683 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19684 yet.</p>
19685
19686 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19687 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19688
19689 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19690 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19691 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19692 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19693
19694       </div>
19695       <div class="tags">
19696
19697
19698         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19699
19700
19701       </div>
19702     </div>
19703     <div class="padding"></div>
19704
19705     <div class="entry">
19706       <div class="title">
19707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
19708       </div>
19709       <div class="date">
19710          8th August 2010
19711       </div>
19712       <div class="body">
19713         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19714 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19715 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19716 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19717 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19718 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19719 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19720
19721 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19722 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19723 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19724 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19725 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19726 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19727 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19728
19729 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19730 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19731 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19732 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19733 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19734
19735 <pre>
19736 /*
19737  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19738  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19739  * directory.
19740  * License: GPL v2 or later
19741  *
19742  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19743  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19744 */
19745
19746 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19747 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19748 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19749
19750 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19751
19752 #include &lt;errno.h>
19753 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19754 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19755 #include &lt;string.h>
19756 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19757 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19758 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19759 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19760 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19761
19762 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19763 /*
19764  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19765  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19766  * below.
19767  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19768  */
19769 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19770 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19771   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19772 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19773   char *zErrMsg;
19774   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19775   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19776   unlink(name);
19777   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19778   if( rc ){
19779     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19780     sqlite3_close(db);
19781     return -1;
19782   }
19783
19784   /* create tables */
19785   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19786   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19787     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19788     sqlite3_close(db);
19789     return -1;
19790   }
19791   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19792   sqlite3_close(db);
19793   return 0;
19794 }
19795 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19796
19797 /*
19798  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19799  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19800  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19801  * See also
19802  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19803  * POSIX specification
19804  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19805  */
19806 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19807   struct flock fl;
19808   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19809   unlink(name);
19810   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19811   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19812
19813   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19814   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19815   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19816   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19817   fl.l_len    = 1;
19818   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19819   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19820
19821   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19822   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19823   fl.l_len    = 510;
19824   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19825   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19826
19827   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19828   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19829   fl.l_len    = 1;
19830   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19831   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19832
19833   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19834   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19835   fl.l_len    = 1;
19836   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19837   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19838
19839   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19840   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19841   fl.l_len    = 510;
19842   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19843
19844   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19845   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19846   fl.l_len    = 2;
19847   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19848   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19849
19850   close(fd);
19851   return 0;
19852 }
19853
19854 /*
19855  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19856  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19857  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19858  * slowing down file operations.
19859  */
19860 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19861 #define LEVELS 5
19862   char *path = strdup("test");
19863   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19864   int level;
19865   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19866   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19867     char *newpath = NULL;
19868     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19869       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19870              path, strerror(errno));
19871       break;
19872     }
19873     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19874     free(path);
19875     path = newpath;
19876   }
19877   return 0;
19878 }
19879
19880 /*
19881  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19882  * KDE.
19883  */
19884 int test_symlinks(void) {
19885   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19886   unlink("symlink");
19887   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19888     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19889   return 0;
19890 }
19891
19892 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19893   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19894   test_symlinks();
19895   test_subdirectory_creation();
19896 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19897   test_sqlite_open();
19898 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19899   test_gcompris_locking();
19900   return 0;
19901 }
19902 </pre>
19903
19904 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19905 this:</p>
19906
19907 <pre>
19908 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19909 info: testing symlink creation
19910 info: testing subdirectory creation
19911 info: sqlite worked
19912 info: testing fcntl locking
19913   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19914   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19915   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19916   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19917   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19918   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19919 </pre>
19920
19921 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19922 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19923 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19924 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19925 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19926 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19927 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19928 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19929
19930 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19931 it. :)</p>
19932
19933 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19934 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19935 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19936
19937       </div>
19938       <div class="tags">
19939
19940
19941         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
19942
19943
19944       </div>
19945     </div>
19946     <div class="padding"></div>
19947
19948     <div class="entry">
19949       <div class="title">
19950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
19951       </div>
19952       <div class="date">
19953          7th August 2010
19954       </div>
19955       <div class="body">
19956         <p>A few days ago, I
19957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19958 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19959 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19960 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19961 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19962 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19963 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19964 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19965 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19966
19967 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19968 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19969 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19970 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19971 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19972 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19973 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19974 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19975 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19976 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19977 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19978 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19979 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19980 gave it a IP address.</p>
19981
19982 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19983 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19984 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19985 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19986 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19987 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19988 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19989 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19990
19991 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19992 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19993 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19994 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19995 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19996 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19997
19998 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19999 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
20000 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
20001 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
20002 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
20003 with UID and GID values.</p>
20004
20005 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
20006 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20007
20008       </div>
20009       <div class="tags">
20010
20011
20012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20013
20014
20015       </div>
20016     </div>
20017     <div class="padding"></div>
20018
20019     <div class="entry">
20020       <div class="title">
20021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
20022       </div>
20023       <div class="date">
20024          3rd August 2010
20025       </div>
20026       <div class="body">
20027         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
20028 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
20029 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
20030 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
20031 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
20032 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
20033 servers.</p>
20034
20035 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
20036 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
20037 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
20038 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
20039 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
20040 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
20041 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
20042 .uio.no.</p>
20043
20044 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
20045 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
20046 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
20047 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
20048 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
20049 university servers.</p>
20050
20051 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
20052 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
20053 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
20054 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
20055 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
20056 uses.</p>
20057
20058       </div>
20059       <div class="tags">
20060
20061
20062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20063
20064
20065       </div>
20066     </div>
20067     <div class="padding"></div>
20068
20069     <div class="entry">
20070       <div class="title">
20071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
20072       </div>
20073       <div class="date">
20074         27th July 2010
20075       </div>
20076       <div class="body">
20077         <p>I discovered this while doing
20078 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
20079 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
20080 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
20081 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
20082 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
20083
20084 <p>An example is from todays
20085 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20086 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20087 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20088 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20089 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20090 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20091 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20092
20093 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20094
20095 <blockquote><pre>
20096 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20097  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20098   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20099 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20100  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20101 </pre></blockquote>
20102
20103 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20104 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20105 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20106 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20107 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20108 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20109 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20110 of dependency loops.</p>
20111
20112 <p>Thanks to
20113 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20114 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20115 dependencies
20116 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20117 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20118
20119 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20120 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20121 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20122 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20123 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20124 it.</p>
20125
20126       </div>
20127       <div class="tags">
20128
20129
20130         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20131
20132
20133       </div>
20134     </div>
20135     <div class="padding"></div>
20136
20137     <div class="entry">
20138       <div class="title">
20139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
20140       </div>
20141       <div class="date">
20142         27th July 2010
20143       </div>
20144       <div class="body">
20145         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20146 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20147 completed.</p>
20148
20149 <blockquote>
20150 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20151 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20152 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20153 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20154 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20155 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20156 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20157 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20158
20159 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20160 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20161 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20162
20163 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20164 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20165 much.</p>
20166
20167 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20168
20169 <ul>
20170 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20171 <ul>
20172   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20173          combination with some new artwork
20174   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20175   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20176   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20177   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20178   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20179   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20180   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20181   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20182   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20183 </ul></li>
20184 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20185     Enabled for:
20186 <ul>
20187   <li>PAM
20188   <li>LDAP
20189   <li>IMAP
20190   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20191 </ul>
20192 </li>
20193 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20194 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20195     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20196 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20197 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20198 </ul>
20199 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20200
20201 <ul>
20202 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20203     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20204     for testing.</li>
20205 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20206     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20207     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20208 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20209 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20210 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20211 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20212     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20213 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20214     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20215     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20216 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20217     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20218     and help out with translations.</li>
20219 </ul>
20220
20221 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20222
20223 <ul>
20224 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
20225 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
20226 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20227 </ul>
20228 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20229
20230 <ul>
20231 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
20232 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
20233 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20234 </ul>
20235
20236 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20237 get closer to the final release.</p>
20238
20239 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20240
20241 <ul>
20242 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20243 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20244 </ul>
20245
20246 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20247 <ul>
20248 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20249 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20250 </ul>
20251 <p>How to report bugs:
20252 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20253
20254 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20255 </blockquote>
20256
20257       </div>
20258       <div class="tags">
20259
20260
20261         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20262
20263
20264       </div>
20265     </div>
20266     <div class="padding"></div>
20267
20268     <div class="entry">
20269       <div class="title">
20270         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
20271       </div>
20272       <div class="date">
20273         25th July 2010
20274       </div>
20275       <div class="body">
20276         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20277 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20278 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20279 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20280 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20281
20282 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20283 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20284 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20285 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20286 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20287 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20288 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20289
20290 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20291 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20292 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20293 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20294 up. :)</p>
20295
20296 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20297 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20298 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20299
20300 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20301 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20302 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20303 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20304 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20305 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20306 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20307 release another day.</p>
20308
20309 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20310 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20311
20312       </div>
20313       <div class="tags">
20314
20315
20316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
20317
20318
20319       </div>
20320     </div>
20321     <div class="padding"></div>
20322
20323     <div class="entry">
20324       <div class="title">
20325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
20326       </div>
20327       <div class="date">
20328         18th July 2010
20329       </div>
20330       <div class="body">
20331         <p>Thanks to
20332 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20333 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20334 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20335 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20336 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20337 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20338 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20339
20340 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20341 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20342 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20343 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20344 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20345 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20346 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20347
20348       </div>
20349       <div class="tags">
20350
20351
20352         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20353
20354
20355       </div>
20356     </div>
20357     <div class="padding"></div>
20358
20359     <div class="entry">
20360       <div class="title">
20361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
20362       </div>
20363       <div class="date">
20364         17th July 2010
20365       </div>
20366       <div class="body">
20367         <p>This is a
20368 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20369 on my
20370 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
20371 work</a> on
20372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20373 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20374
20375 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20376 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20377 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20378 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20379
20380 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20381 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20382 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20383
20384 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20385
20386 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20387 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20388 the web.
20389
20390 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20391 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20392 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20393 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20394 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20395 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20396
20397 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20398 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20399 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20400 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20401 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20402 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20403 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20404 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20405 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20406 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20407 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20408 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20409 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20410 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20411 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20412 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20413
20414 <blockquote><pre>
20415 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20416   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20417   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20418   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20419   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20420   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20421   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20422
20423 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20424   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20425   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20426   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20427   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20428   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20429 </pre></blockquote>
20430
20431 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20432 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20433 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20434 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20435 also exist.</p>
20436
20437 <blockquote><pre>
20438 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20439 objectclass: top
20440 objectclass: dnsdomain
20441 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20442 dc: tjener
20443 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20444 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20445
20446 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20447 objectclass: top
20448 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20449 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20450 dc: 2
20451 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20452 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20453 </pre></blockquote>
20454
20455 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20456 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20457 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20458 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20459 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20460 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20461 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20462 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20463 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20464 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20465 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20466 instead.</p>
20467
20468 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20469 like this:</p>
20470
20471 <blockquote><pre>
20472 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20473   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20474   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20475   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20476   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20477   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20478
20479 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20480   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20481 </pre></blockquote>
20482
20483 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20484 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20485 reverse lookups.</p>
20486
20487 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20488 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20489 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20490 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20491
20492 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20493 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20494 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20495
20496 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20497 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20498 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20499 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20500 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20501
20502 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20503 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20504 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20505 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20506 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20507
20508 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20509 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20510 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20511 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20512 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20513 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20514
20515 <blockquote><pre>
20516 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20517     SUP top
20518     AUXILIARY
20519     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20520           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20521           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20522           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20523           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20524     ))
20525 </pre></blockquote>
20526
20527 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20528 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20529 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20530 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20531 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20532 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20533
20534 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20535
20536 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20537 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20538 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20539 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20540 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20541
20542 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20543 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20544 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20545 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20546
20547 <blockquote><pre>
20548 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20549 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20550 </pre></blockquote>
20551
20552 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20553 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20554 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20555 search result is this entry:</p>
20556
20557 <blockquote><pre>
20558 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20559 cn: dhcp
20560 objectClass: top
20561 objectClass: dhcpServer
20562 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20563 </pre></blockquote>
20564
20565 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20566 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20567 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20568 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20569 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20570 The search result is this entry:</p>
20571
20572 <blockquote><pre>
20573 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20574 cn: DHCP Config
20575 objectClass: top
20576 objectClass: dhcpService
20577 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20578 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20579 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20580 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20581 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20582 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20583 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20584 </pre></blockquote>
20585
20586 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20587 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20588 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20589 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20590 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20591 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20592 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20593 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20594 related computer objects.</p>
20595
20596 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20597 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20598 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20599 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20600 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20601 like:</p>
20602
20603 <blockquote><pre>
20604 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20605 cn: hostname
20606 objectClass: top
20607 objectClass: dhcpHost
20608 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20609 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20610 </pre></blockquote>
20611
20612 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20613 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20614 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20615 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20616 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20617 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20618 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20619 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20620 structural object class.
20621
20622 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20623
20624 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20625 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20626 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20627 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20628 in the configuration.</p>
20629
20630 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20631 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20632 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20633 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20634 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20635 structure.</p>
20636
20637 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20638 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20639
20640 <blockquote><pre>
20641 ou=services
20642   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20643     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20644     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20645       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20646         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20647     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20648       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20649         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20650     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20651       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20652 </pre></blockquote>
20653
20654 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20655 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20656 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20657 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20658
20659 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20660 like this:</p>
20661
20662 <blockquote><pre>
20663 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20664 dc: hostname
20665 objectClass: top
20666 objectClass: dhcpHost
20667 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20668 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20669 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20670 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20671 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20672 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20673 </pre></blockquote>
20674
20675 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20676 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20677 auxiliary object class.</p>
20678
20679       </div>
20680       <div class="tags">
20681
20682
20683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20684
20685
20686       </div>
20687     </div>
20688     <div class="padding"></div>
20689
20690     <div class="entry">
20691       <div class="title">
20692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20693       </div>
20694       <div class="date">
20695         14th July 2010
20696       </div>
20697       <div class="body">
20698         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20699 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20700 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20701 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20702 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20703
20704 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20705 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20706
20707 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20708 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20709 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20710 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20711 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20712 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20713
20714 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20715 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20716 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20717 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20718 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20719 seem to work.</p>
20720
20721 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20722 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20723 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20724 this:</p>
20725
20726 <blockquote><pre>
20727   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20728   cn: hostname
20729   objectClass: dhcphost
20730   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20731   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20732   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20733   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20734   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20735   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20736   ldapconfigsound: Y
20737 </pre></blockquote>
20738
20739 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20740 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20741 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20742 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20743
20744 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20745 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20746 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20747 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20748 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20749 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20750 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20751 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20752
20753 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20754 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20755
20756       </div>
20757       <div class="tags">
20758
20759
20760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20761
20762
20763       </div>
20764     </div>
20765     <div class="padding"></div>
20766
20767     <div class="entry">
20768       <div class="title">
20769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20770       </div>
20771       <div class="date">
20772         11th July 2010
20773       </div>
20774       <div class="body">
20775         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20776 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20777 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20778 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20779
20780 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20781 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20782 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20783 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20784 LTSP clients.</p>
20785
20786 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20787 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20788 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20789
20790 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20791 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20792 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20793
20794 <blockquote><pre>
20795 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20796 #
20797 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20798 #
20799 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20800 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20801 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20802 #
20803 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20804 # existence of attribute names.
20805 #
20806 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20807 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20808 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20809 #
20810 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20811 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20812 #
20813 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20814 #     SUP top
20815 #     AUXILIARY
20816 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20817
20818 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20819 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20820     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20821     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20822         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20823         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20824             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20825             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20826             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20827             # bass value on to clients
20828             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20829         done
20830     done
20831 fi
20832 </pre></blockquote>
20833
20834 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20835 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20836 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20837 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20838 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20839
20840 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20841 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20842
20843 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20844 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20845 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20846 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20847 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20848 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20849
20850       </div>
20851       <div class="tags">
20852
20853
20854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20855
20856
20857       </div>
20858     </div>
20859     <div class="padding"></div>
20860
20861     <div class="entry">
20862       <div class="title">
20863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20864       </div>
20865       <div class="date">
20866          9th July 2010
20867       </div>
20868       <div class="body">
20869         <p>Since
20870 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20871 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20872 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20873 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20874 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20875 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20876 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20877 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20878 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20879 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20880 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20881 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20882 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20883
20884       </div>
20885       <div class="tags">
20886
20887
20888         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20889
20890
20891       </div>
20892     </div>
20893     <div class="padding"></div>
20894
20895     <div class="entry">
20896       <div class="title">
20897         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
20898       </div>
20899       <div class="date">
20900          3rd July 2010
20901       </div>
20902       <div class="body">
20903         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20904 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20905 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20906 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20907 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20908 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20909 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20910 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20911
20912 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20913 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20914 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20915 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20916 publish the difference.</p>
20917
20918 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20919
20920 <blockquote><p>
20921   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20922   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20923   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20924   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20925   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20926   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20927   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20928   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20929 </p></blockquote>
20930
20931 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20932
20933 <blockquote><p>
20934   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20935   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20936   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20937   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20938   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20939   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20940   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20941   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20942   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20943   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20944   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20945   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20946   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20947   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20948   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20949   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20950   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20951   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20952   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20953   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20954 </p></blockquote>
20955
20956 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20957
20958 <blockquote><p>
20959   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20960   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20961   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20962   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20963   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20964   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20965   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20966   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20967   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20968   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20969   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20970   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20971   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20972   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20973   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20974   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20975   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20976   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20977   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20978   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20979   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20980 </p></blockquote>
20981
20982 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20983
20984 <blockquote><p>
20985   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20986   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20987   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20988 </p></blockquote>
20989
20990 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20991 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20992 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20993 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20994 the difference somewhat.
20995
20996       </div>
20997       <div class="tags">
20998
20999
21000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21001
21002
21003       </div>
21004     </div>
21005     <div class="padding"></div>
21006
21007     <div class="entry">
21008       <div class="title">
21009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
21010       </div>
21011       <div class="date">
21012          1st July 2010
21013       </div>
21014       <div class="body">
21015         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
21016 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
21017 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
21018 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
21019 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
21020 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
21021 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
21022 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
21023 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
21024
21025 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21026
21027 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
21028 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
21029 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
21030 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
21031 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
21032 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
21033 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
21034 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
21035 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
21036 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
21037 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
21038 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
21039 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
21040 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
21041 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
21042
21043 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
21044
21045 <blockquote><pre>
21046 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
21047 </pre></blockquote>
21048
21049 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
21050 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
21051 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
21052 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
21053 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
21054 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
21055 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
21056 on how to get this working.</p>
21057
21058 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
21059 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
21060 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
21061 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
21062 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
21063 instructions I found in the
21064 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
21065 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
21066
21067 <blockquote><pre>
21068         debug-level             0
21069         reload-count            unlimited
21070         paranoia                no
21071
21072         enable-cache            passwd          yes
21073         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
21074         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
21075         suggested-size          passwd          211
21076         check-files             passwd          yes
21077         persistent              passwd          yes
21078         shared                  passwd          yes
21079         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
21080         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
21081
21082         enable-cache            group           yes
21083         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21084         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21085         suggested-size          group           211
21086         check-files             group           yes
21087         persistent              group           yes
21088         shared                  group           yes
21089         max-db-size             group           33554432
21090         auto-propagate          group           yes
21091
21092         enable-cache            hosts           no
21093         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21094         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21095         suggested-size          hosts           211
21096         check-files             hosts           yes
21097         persistent              hosts           yes
21098         shared                  hosts           yes
21099         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21100
21101         enable-cache            services        yes
21102         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21103         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21104         suggested-size          services        211
21105         check-files             services        yes
21106         persistent              services        yes
21107         shared                  services        yes
21108         max-db-size             services        33554432
21109 </pre></blockquote>
21110
21111 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21112 automatically like the one provided in
21113 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21114 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21115 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21116 look like this:</p>
21117
21118 <blockquote><pre>
21119 passwd:         files ldap
21120 group:          files ldap
21121 shadow:         files ldap
21122 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21123 networks:       files
21124 protocols:      files
21125 services:       files
21126 ethers:         files
21127 rpc:            files
21128 netgroup:       files ldap
21129 </pre></blockquote>
21130
21131 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21132 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21133
21134 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21135 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21136 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21137 attributes cached.
21138
21139 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21140   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21141
21142 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21143 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21144 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21145 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21146 discovered sssd.</p>
21147
21148 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21149
21150 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21151 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21152 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21153 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21154 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21155 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21156 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21157 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21158 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21159 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21160 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21161 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21162 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21163
21164 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21165 roaming setup I want</p>
21166
21167 <blockquote><pre>
21168 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21169 </pre></blockquote>
21170
21171 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21172 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21173
21174 <blockquote><pre>
21175 [sssd]
21176 config_file_version = 2
21177 reconnection_retries = 3
21178 sbus_timeout = 30
21179 services = nss, pam
21180 domains = INTERN
21181
21182 [nss]
21183 filter_groups = root
21184 filter_users = root
21185 reconnection_retries = 3
21186
21187 [pam]
21188 reconnection_retries = 3
21189
21190 [domain/INTERN]
21191 enumerate = false
21192 cache_credentials = true
21193
21194 id_provider = ldap
21195 auth_provider = ldap
21196 chpass_provider = ldap
21197
21198 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21199 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21200 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21201 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21202 </pre></blockquote>
21203
21204 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21205 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21206
21207 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21208 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21209 modify it manually.</p>
21210
21211 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21212 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21213
21214       </div>
21215       <div class="tags">
21216
21217
21218         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21219
21220
21221       </div>
21222     </div>
21223     <div class="padding"></div>
21224
21225     <div class="entry">
21226       <div class="title">
21227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21228       </div>
21229       <div class="date">
21230         28th June 2010
21231       </div>
21232       <div class="body">
21233         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21234 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21235 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21236 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21237 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21238 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21239 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21240 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21241 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21242 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21243
21244 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21245 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21246 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21247 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21248 released.</p>
21249
21250 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21251 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21252 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21253 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21254
21255 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21256 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21257
21258 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21259 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21260 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21261 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21262 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21263
21264       </div>
21265       <div class="tags">
21266
21267
21268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21269
21270
21271       </div>
21272     </div>
21273     <div class="padding"></div>
21274
21275     <div class="entry">
21276       <div class="title">
21277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
21278       </div>
21279       <div class="date">
21280         24th June 2010
21281       </div>
21282       <div class="body">
21283         <p>A while back, I
21284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21285 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21286 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21287 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21288
21289 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21290 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21291 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21292 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21293
21294 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21295 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21296 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21297 Debian Edu.</p>
21298
21299 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21300 the
21301 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21302 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21303 available today from IETF.</p>
21304
21305 <pre>
21306 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21307 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21308 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21309  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21310         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21311         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21312 -       SUP top
21313 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21314         MUST cn
21315         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21316         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21317 </pre>
21318
21319 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21320 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21321 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21322
21323 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21324 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21325
21326       </div>
21327       <div class="tags">
21328
21329
21330         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21331
21332
21333       </div>
21334     </div>
21335     <div class="padding"></div>
21336
21337     <div class="entry">
21338       <div class="title">
21339         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
21340       </div>
21341       <div class="date">
21342         16th June 2010
21343       </div>
21344       <div class="body">
21345         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21346 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21347 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21348 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21349 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21350 this:
21351
21352 <blockquote><pre>
21353 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21354 tasksel --new-install
21355 </pre></blockquote>
21356
21357 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21358 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21359 any output what so ever.
21360
21361 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21362 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21363 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21364 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21365 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21366 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21367 code like this:
21368
21369 <blockquote><pre>
21370 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21371 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21372 $cmd
21373 </pre></blockquote>
21374
21375 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21376 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21377 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21378 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21379 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21380 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21381 installation.</p>
21382
21383 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21384 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21385 like this.</p>
21386
21387       </div>
21388       <div class="tags">
21389
21390
21391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
21392
21393
21394       </div>
21395     </div>
21396     <div class="padding"></div>
21397
21398     <div class="entry">
21399       <div class="title">
21400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21401       </div>
21402       <div class="date">
21403         13th June 2010
21404       </div>
21405       <div class="body">
21406         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21407 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21408 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21409 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21410 pages.</p>
21411
21412 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21413 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21414 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21415 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21416 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21417 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21418 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21419 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21420 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21421 see how the project is doing.</p>
21422
21423 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21424 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21425 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21426 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21427 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21428
21429       </div>
21430       <div class="tags">
21431
21432
21433         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
21434
21435
21436       </div>
21437     </div>
21438     <div class="padding"></div>
21439
21440     <div class="entry">
21441       <div class="title">
21442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
21443       </div>
21444       <div class="date">
21445         13th June 2010
21446       </div>
21447       <div class="body">
21448         <p>My
21449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21450 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21451 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21452 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21453 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21454 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21455 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21456
21457 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21458 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21459 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21460 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21461 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21462 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21463 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21464 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21465
21466 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21467 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21468 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21469 too surprising.</p>
21470
21471 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21472 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21473 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21474 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21475 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21476 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21477 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21478 continue.</p>
21479
21480 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21481 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21482   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21483   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21484   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21485   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21486   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21487   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21488   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21489   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21490   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21491   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21492   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21493   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21494   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21495   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21496   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21497   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21498   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21499   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21500   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21501   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21502   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21503   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21504   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21505   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21506   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21507   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21508   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21509   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21510
21511 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21512
21513 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21514   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21515   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21516   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21517   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21518   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21519   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21520   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21521   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21522   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21523   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21524   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21525   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21526   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21527   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21528   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21529   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21530   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21531   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21532   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21533   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21534   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21535   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21536   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21537   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21538   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21539   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21540   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21541   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21542   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21543   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21544   zip</p>
21545
21546 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21547
21548 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21549   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21550   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21551   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21552   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21553   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21554   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21555   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21556   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21557   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21558   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21559   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21560   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21561   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21562   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21563   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21564   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21565   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21566   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21567   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21568   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21569   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21570   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21571   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21572   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21573   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21574   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21575   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21576
21577 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21578 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21579   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21580   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21581   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21582   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21583   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21584   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21585   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21586   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21587   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21588   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21589   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21590   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21591   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21592   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21593   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21594   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21595   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21596   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21597   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21598   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21599   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21600   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21601   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21602   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21603   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21604   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21605   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21606   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21607   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21608   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21609   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21610   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21611   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21612   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21613   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21614   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21615
21616
21617       </div>
21618       <div class="tags">
21619
21620
21621         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21622
21623
21624       </div>
21625     </div>
21626     <div class="padding"></div>
21627
21628     <div class="entry">
21629       <div class="title">
21630         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21631       </div>
21632       <div class="date">
21633         11th June 2010
21634       </div>
21635       <div class="body">
21636         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21637 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21638 have been discovered and reported in the process
21639 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21640 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21641 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21642 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21643 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21644
21645 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21646 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21647 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21648 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21649 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21650 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21651
21652 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21653 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21654 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21655 is created.  The bug report
21656 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21657 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21658 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21659 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21660 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21661 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21662 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21663 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21664 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21665 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21666 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21667 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21668 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21669
21670 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21671 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21672 trick:</p>
21673
21674 <blockquote><pre>
21675 #!/bin/sh
21676 set -ex
21677
21678 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21679     desktop=$1
21680 else
21681     desktop=gnome
21682 fi
21683
21684 from=lenny
21685 to=squeeze
21686
21687 exec &lt; /dev/null
21688 unset LANG
21689 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21690 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21691 fuser -mv .
21692 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21693 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21694 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21695 #!/bin/sh
21696 exit 101
21697 EOF
21698 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21699 exit_cleanup() {
21700     umount $tmpdir/proc
21701 }
21702 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21703 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21704 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21705
21706 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21707
21708 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21709 # to return the correct answers.
21710 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21711     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21712
21713 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21714 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21715     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21716 #!/bin/sh
21717 exit 2
21718 EOF
21719     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21720 done
21721
21722 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21723 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21724 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21725 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21726
21727 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21728 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21729 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21730 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21731 fuser -mv
21732 </pre></blockquote>
21733
21734 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21735 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21736 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21737 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21738 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21739 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21740
21741 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21742 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21743 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21744 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21745 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21746 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21747 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21748
21749 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21750 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21751 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21752 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21753 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21754 packages.</p>
21755
21756       </div>
21757       <div class="tags">
21758
21759
21760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21761
21762
21763       </div>
21764     </div>
21765     <div class="padding"></div>
21766
21767     <div class="entry">
21768       <div class="title">
21769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
21770       </div>
21771       <div class="date">
21772          6th June 2010
21773       </div>
21774       <div class="body">
21775         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21776 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21777 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21778 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21779 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21780 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21781 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21782
21783 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21784 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21785 COLUMNS):</p>
21786
21787 <blockquote><pre>
21788 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21789 previous=N
21790 PREVLEVEL=
21791 RUNLEVEL=
21792 runlevel=S
21793 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21794 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21795 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21796 </pre></blockquote>
21797
21798 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21799 script.</p>
21800
21801 <blockquote><pre>
21802 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21803 previous=N
21804 PREVLEVEL=N
21805 RUNLEVEL=S
21806 runlevel=S
21807 </pre></blockquote>
21808
21809 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21810 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21811 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21812
21813 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21814 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21815 choice.</p>
21816
21817       </div>
21818       <div class="tags">
21819
21820
21821         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21822
21823
21824       </div>
21825     </div>
21826     <div class="padding"></div>
21827
21828     <div class="entry">
21829       <div class="title">
21830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21831       </div>
21832       <div class="date">
21833          6th June 2010
21834       </div>
21835       <div class="body">
21836         <p>Via the
21837 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21838 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21839 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21840 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21841 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21842
21843       </div>
21844       <div class="tags">
21845
21846
21847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
21848
21849
21850       </div>
21851     </div>
21852     <div class="padding"></div>
21853
21854     <div class="entry">
21855       <div class="title">
21856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
21857       </div>
21858       <div class="date">
21859          3rd June 2010
21860       </div>
21861       <div class="body">
21862         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21863 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21864 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21865 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21866 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21867
21868 <blockquote><pre>
21869 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21870   vendor                    count
21871   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21872     PowerEdge 1750              1
21873   IBM                           1
21874     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21875   Intel                         2
21876   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21877 maintainer:~#
21878 </pre></blockquote>
21879
21880 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21881 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21882 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21883 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21884 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21885
21886 <p>A larger list is
21887 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21888 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21889 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21890 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21891 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21892 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21893 collector.</p>
21894
21895       </div>
21896       <div class="tags">
21897
21898
21899         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
21900
21901
21902       </div>
21903     </div>
21904     <div class="padding"></div>
21905
21906     <div class="entry">
21907       <div class="title">
21908         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
21909       </div>
21910       <div class="date">
21911          1st June 2010
21912       </div>
21913       <div class="body">
21914         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21915 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21916 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21917 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21918 wait.</p>
21919
21920 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21921 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21922 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21923 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21925 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21926
21927 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21928 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21929 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21930 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21931 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21932 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21933 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21934 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21935
21936 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21937
21938       </div>
21939       <div class="tags">
21940
21941
21942         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
21943
21944
21945       </div>
21946     </div>
21947     <div class="padding"></div>
21948
21949     <div class="entry">
21950       <div class="title">
21951         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
21952       </div>
21953       <div class="date">
21954         27th May 2010
21955       </div>
21956       <div class="body">
21957         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21958 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21959 issues are known and should be solved:
21960
21961 <p><ul>
21962
21963 <li>The wicd package seen to
21964 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21965 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21966 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21967 seem to be on the case.</li>
21968
21969 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21970 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21971 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21972 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21973
21974 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21975 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21976 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21977 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21978 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21979 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21980 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21981 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21982
21983 </ul></p>
21984
21985 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21986 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21987 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21988 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21989
21990 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21991 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21992 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21993 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21994
21995 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21996
21997       </div>
21998       <div class="tags">
21999
22000
22001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22002
22003
22004       </div>
22005     </div>
22006     <div class="padding"></div>
22007
22008     <div class="entry">
22009       <div class="title">
22010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
22011       </div>
22012       <div class="date">
22013         22nd May 2010
22014       </div>
22015       <div class="body">
22016         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
22017 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
22018 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
22019 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
22020
22021 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
22022 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
22023 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
22024 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
22025 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
22026 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
22027 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
22028 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
22029 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
22030 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
22031 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
22032 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
22033 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
22034 going to work.</p>
22035
22036 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
22037 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
22038 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
22039 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
22040 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
22041 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
22042 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
22043 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
22044 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
22045 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
22046 Edu.</p>
22047
22048 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
22049 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
22050 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
22051 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
22052 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
22053 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
22054
22055 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
22056 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
22057
22058       </div>
22059       <div class="tags">
22060
22061
22062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22063
22064
22065       </div>
22066     </div>
22067     <div class="padding"></div>
22068
22069     <div class="entry">
22070       <div class="title">
22071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
22072       </div>
22073       <div class="date">
22074         19th May 2010
22075       </div>
22076       <div class="body">
22077         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
22078 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
22079 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
22080 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
22081 into unstable.  The
22082 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
22083 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22084 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22085 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22086 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22087 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22088 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22089
22090 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22091 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22092 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22093 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22094 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22095 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22096 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22097 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22098
22099 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22100 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22101 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22102 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22103 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22104 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22105 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22106
22107 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22108 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22109 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22110 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22111 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22112 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22113 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22114 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22115 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22116 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22117 on the home directory servers.</p>
22118
22119 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22120 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22121 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22122 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22123 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22124 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22125
22126 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22127 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22128
22129       </div>
22130       <div class="tags">
22131
22132
22133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22134
22135
22136       </div>
22137     </div>
22138     <div class="padding"></div>
22139
22140     <div class="entry">
22141       <div class="title">
22142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
22143       </div>
22144       <div class="date">
22145         14th May 2010
22146       </div>
22147       <div class="body">
22148         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22149 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22150 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22151 expected, if I am to believe the
22152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22153 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22154 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22155 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22156 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22157 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22158 version.</p>
22159
22160 More information about
22161 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22162 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22163 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22164 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22165
22166 <blockquote><pre>
22167 CONCURRENCY=none
22168 </pre></blockquote>
22169
22170 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22171 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22172 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22173 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22174
22175       </div>
22176       <div class="tags">
22177
22178
22179         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22180
22181
22182       </div>
22183     </div>
22184     <div class="padding"></div>
22185
22186     <div class="entry">
22187       <div class="title">
22188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
22189       </div>
22190       <div class="date">
22191         14th May 2010
22192       </div>
22193       <div class="body">
22194         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22195 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22196 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22197 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22198 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22199 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22200 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22201 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22202
22203 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22204 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22205 this on the collector host:</p>
22206
22207 <blockquote><pre>
22208 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22209 </pre></blockquote>
22210
22211 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22212 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22213
22214 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22215 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22216 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22217 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22218 written yet.</p>
22219
22220       </div>
22221       <div class="tags">
22222
22223
22224         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
22225
22226
22227       </div>
22228     </div>
22229     <div class="padding"></div>
22230
22231     <div class="entry">
22232       <div class="title">
22233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22234       </div>
22235       <div class="date">
22236         13th May 2010
22237       </div>
22238       <div class="body">
22239         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22240 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22241 has been
22242 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22243
22244 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22245 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22246 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22247 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22248 based boot system.  Tollef is
22249 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22250 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22251 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22252 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22253 at the moment do not.</p>
22254
22255 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22256 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22257 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22258 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22259 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22260 way forward.</p>
22261
22262 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22263 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22264 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22265 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22266 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22267 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22268 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22269 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22270 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22271
22272       </div>
22273       <div class="tags">
22274
22275
22276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22277
22278
22279       </div>
22280     </div>
22281     <div class="padding"></div>
22282
22283     <div class="entry">
22284       <div class="title">
22285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
22286       </div>
22287       <div class="date">
22288          6th May 2010
22289       </div>
22290       <div class="body">
22291         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22292 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22293 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22294 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22295 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22296 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22297 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22298
22299 <blockquote><pre>
22300 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22301 </pre></blockquote>
22302
22303 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22304 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22305 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22306 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22307 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22308 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22309 make this happen.</p>
22310
22311 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22312 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22313 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22314 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22315 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22316
22317 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22318 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22319 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22320 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22321
22322 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22323 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22324 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22325 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22326
22327       </div>
22328       <div class="tags">
22329
22330
22331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22332
22333
22334       </div>
22335     </div>
22336     <div class="padding"></div>
22337
22338     <div class="entry">
22339       <div class="title">
22340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
22341       </div>
22342       <div class="date">
22343          2nd May 2010
22344       </div>
22345       <div class="body">
22346         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22347 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22348 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22349
22350 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22351 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22352 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22353 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22354 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22355
22356 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22357 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22358
22359 <blockquote><pre>
22360 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22361 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22362 Password expires                                        : never
22363 Password inactive                                       : never
22364 Account expires                                         : never
22365 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22366 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22367 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22368 root@tjener:~#
22369 </pre></blockquote>
22370
22371 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22372 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22373 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22374 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22375 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22376 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22377
22378 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22379 intended:</p>
22380
22381 <blockquote><pre>
22382 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22383 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22384 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22385 Password expires                                        : never
22386 Password inactive                                       : never
22387 Account expires                                         : never
22388 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22389 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22390 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22391 root@tjener:~#
22392 </pre></blockquote>
22393
22394 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22395 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22396 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22397
22398 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22399 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22400
22401 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22402 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22403
22404 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22405 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22406 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22407 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22408 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22409 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22410 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22411
22412 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22413 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22414 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22415 change.</p>
22416
22417       </div>
22418       <div class="tags">
22419
22420
22421         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
22422
22423
22424       </div>
22425     </div>
22426     <div class="padding"></div>
22427
22428     <div class="entry">
22429       <div class="title">
22430         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
22431       </div>
22432       <div class="date">
22433         28th April 2010
22434       </div>
22435       <div class="body">
22436         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22437 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22438 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22439 and go.</p>
22440
22441 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22442 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22443 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22444 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22445
22446 <ul>
22447
22448  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22449    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22450    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22451    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22452    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22453    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22454    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22455    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22456    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22457    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22458    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22459    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22460
22461  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22462    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22463    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22464    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22465    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22466    or the Fedora developed
22467    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22468    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22469
22470  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22471    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22472    directory, using unison.</li>
22473
22474  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22475    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22476    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22477    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22478    implemented.</li>
22479
22480  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22481    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22482
22483  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22484    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22485    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22486
22487 </ul>
22488
22489 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22490 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22491 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22492 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22493 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22494 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22495 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22496 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22497 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22498
22499 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22500 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22501
22502       </div>
22503       <div class="tags">
22504
22505
22506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22507
22508
22509       </div>
22510     </div>
22511     <div class="padding"></div>
22512
22513     <div class="entry">
22514       <div class="title">
22515         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
22516       </div>
22517       <div class="date">
22518         19th April 2010
22519       </div>
22520       <div class="body">
22521         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22522 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22523 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22524 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22525 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22526 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22527 restrictions on the web, for example from
22528 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22529 epub-version from
22530 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22531 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22532 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22533
22534       </div>
22535       <div class="tags">
22536
22537
22538         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22539
22540
22541       </div>
22542     </div>
22543     <div class="padding"></div>
22544
22545     <div class="entry">
22546       <div class="title">
22547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22548       </div>
22549       <div class="date">
22550         14th April 2010
22551       </div>
22552       <div class="body">
22553         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22554 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22555 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22556 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22557 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22558 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22559 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22560 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22561 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22562
22563 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22564 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22565 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22566 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22567 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22568
22569 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22570 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22571
22572 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22573 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22574 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22575 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22576 to work properly.</p>
22577
22578 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22579 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22580 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22581 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22582 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22583 time.</p>
22584
22585 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22586 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22587 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22588 up in a few days.</p>
22589
22590       </div>
22591       <div class="tags">
22592
22593
22594         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22595
22596
22597       </div>
22598     </div>
22599     <div class="padding"></div>
22600
22601     <div class="entry">
22602       <div class="title">
22603         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
22604       </div>
22605       <div class="date">
22606          6th March 2010
22607       </div>
22608       <div class="body">
22609         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22610 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22611 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22612 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22613 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22614 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22615
22616 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22617 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22618 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22619 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22620
22621 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22622 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22623 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22624 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22625 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22626 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22627
22628       </div>
22629       <div class="tags">
22630
22631
22632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22633
22634
22635       </div>
22636     </div>
22637     <div class="padding"></div>
22638
22639     <div class="entry">
22640       <div class="title">
22641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
22642       </div>
22643       <div class="date">
22644         11th February 2010
22645       </div>
22646       <div class="body">
22647         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22648 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22649 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22650 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22651 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22652 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22653 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22654
22655 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22656
22657 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22658 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22659 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22660 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22661
22662       </div>
22663       <div class="tags">
22664
22665
22666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22667
22668
22669       </div>
22670     </div>
22671     <div class="padding"></div>
22672
22673     <div class="entry">
22674       <div class="title">
22675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22676       </div>
22677       <div class="date">
22678         27th January 2010
22679       </div>
22680       <div class="body">
22681         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22682 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22683 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22684 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22685 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22686 further.</p>
22687
22688 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22689 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22690 configured to be a server for the
22691 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22692 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22693 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22694 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22695 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22696 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22697 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22698 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22699 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22700 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22701
22702 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22703 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22704 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22705 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22706
22707 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22708 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22709 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22710 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22711 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22712 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22713 the machine.</p>
22714
22715 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22716 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22717 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22718 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22719
22720 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22721 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22722 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22723 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22724 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22725 everything is taken care of.</p>
22726
22727       </div>
22728       <div class="tags">
22729
22730
22731         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
22732
22733
22734       </div>
22735     </div>
22736     <div class="padding"></div>
22737
22738     <div class="entry">
22739       <div class="title">
22740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
22741       </div>
22742       <div class="date">
22743         12th August 2009
22744       </div>
22745       <div class="body">
22746         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22747 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22748 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22749 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22750
22751 <table>
22752 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22753 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22754 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22755 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22756 </table>
22757
22758 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22759 got these numbers:</p>
22760
22761 <table>
22762 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22763 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22764 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22765 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22766 </table>
22767
22768 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22769
22770 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22771 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22772 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22773 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22774 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22775
22776
22777 <table>
22778 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22779 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22780 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22781 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22782 </table>
22783
22784 <p>And with 'site:no':
22785
22786 <table>
22787 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22788 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22789 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22790 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22791 </table>
22792
22793 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22794 numbers.</p>
22795
22796       </div>
22797       <div class="tags">
22798
22799
22800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22801
22802
22803       </div>
22804     </div>
22805     <div class="padding"></div>
22806
22807     <div class="entry">
22808       <div class="title">
22809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22810       </div>
22811       <div class="date">
22812          8th August 2009
22813       </div>
22814       <div class="body">
22815         <p>According to <a
22816 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22817 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22818 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22819 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22820 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22821 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22822 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22823 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22824 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22825 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22826
22827 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22828 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22829 seminar this autumn.</p>
22830
22831       </div>
22832       <div class="tags">
22833
22834
22835         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22836
22837
22838       </div>
22839     </div>
22840     <div class="padding"></div>
22841
22842     <div class="entry">
22843       <div class="title">
22844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
22845       </div>
22846       <div class="date">
22847         27th July 2009
22848       </div>
22849       <div class="body">
22850         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22851 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22852 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22853 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22854 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22855 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22856 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22857
22858 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22859 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22860 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22861
22862       </div>
22863       <div class="tags">
22864
22865
22866         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22867
22868
22869       </div>
22870     </div>
22871     <div class="padding"></div>
22872
22873     <div class="entry">
22874       <div class="title">
22875         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22876       </div>
22877       <div class="date">
22878         22nd July 2009
22879       </div>
22880       <div class="body">
22881         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22882 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22883 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22884 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22885 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22886 the package up to date.</p>
22887
22888 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22889 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22890 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22891 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22892 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22893 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22894 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22895 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22896 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22897 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22898 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22899 working on the future release.</p>
22900
22901 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22902 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22903
22904       </div>
22905       <div class="tags">
22906
22907
22908         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
22909
22910
22911       </div>
22912     </div>
22913     <div class="padding"></div>
22914
22915     <div class="entry">
22916       <div class="title">
22917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22918       </div>
22919       <div class="date">
22920         24th June 2009
22921       </div>
22922       <div class="body">
22923         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22924 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22925 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22926 funded
22927 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22928 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22929 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22930 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22931 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22932 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22933
22934 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22935 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22936 boot:</p>
22937
22938 <ul>
22939
22940 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22941
22942 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22943    clock is in UTC.</li>
22944
22945 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22946    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22947    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22948
22949 </ul>
22950
22951 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22952 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22953 Villegas</a>.
22954
22955 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22956 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22957 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22958 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22959 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22960 using this.</p>
22961
22962 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22963 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22964 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22965 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22966 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22967 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22968 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22969
22970       </div>
22971       <div class="tags">
22972
22973
22974         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22975
22976
22977       </div>
22978     </div>
22979     <div class="padding"></div>
22980
22981     <div class="entry">
22982       <div class="title">
22983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
22984       </div>
22985       <div class="date">
22986          2nd May 2009
22987       </div>
22988       <div class="body">
22989         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22990 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22991 do not yet know them.</p>
22992
22993 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22994 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22995 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22996 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22997 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22998 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22999 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
23000 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
23001 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
23002 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
23003 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
23004
23005 <p>The second one is
23006 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
23007 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
23008 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
23009 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
23010 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
23011 and the company behind it is running
23012 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
23013 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
23014 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
23015 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
23016 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
23017 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
23018 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
23019 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
23020
23021 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
23022 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
23023 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
23024 surrounded by today.</p>
23025
23026       </div>
23027       <div class="tags">
23028
23029
23030         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
23031
23032
23033       </div>
23034     </div>
23035     <div class="padding"></div>
23036
23037     <div class="entry">
23038       <div class="title">
23039         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
23040       </div>
23041       <div class="date">
23042         28th April 2009
23043       </div>
23044       <div class="body">
23045         <p>Julien Blache
23046 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
23047 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
23048 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
23049 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
23050 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
23051 properties.</p>
23052
23053       </div>
23054       <div class="tags">
23055
23056
23057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23058
23059
23060       </div>
23061     </div>
23062     <div class="padding"></div>
23063
23064     <div class="entry">
23065       <div class="title">
23066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
23067       </div>
23068       <div class="date">
23069          5th April 2009
23070       </div>
23071       <div class="body">
23072         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
23073 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
23074 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
23075 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
23076 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
23077 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
23078 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
23079 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
23080
23081 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
23082 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
23083 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23084   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23085   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23086
23087 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23088 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23089 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23090 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23091
23092 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23093 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23094 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23095 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23096
23097 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23098 set -e
23099 URL="$1"
23100 SAVEFILE="$2"
23101 DURATION="$3"
23102 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23103   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23104   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23105 pid=$!
23106 sleep $DURATION
23107 kill $pid
23108 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23109
23110       </div>
23111       <div class="tags">
23112
23113
23114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
23115
23116
23117       </div>
23118     </div>
23119     <div class="padding"></div>
23120
23121     <div class="entry">
23122       <div class="title">
23123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
23124       </div>
23125       <div class="date">
23126         30th March 2009
23127       </div>
23128       <div class="body">
23129         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23130 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23131 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23132 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23133 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23134 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23135 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23136 application.</p>
23137
23138 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23139 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23140 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23141 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23142 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23143 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23144 blocked from doing so.</p>
23145
23146 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23147 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23148 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23149 requirements change.</p>
23150
23151 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23152 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23153 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23154
23155       </div>
23156       <div class="tags">
23157
23158
23159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
23160
23161
23162       </div>
23163     </div>
23164     <div class="padding"></div>
23165
23166     <div class="entry">
23167       <div class="title">
23168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23169       </div>
23170       <div class="date">
23171         29th March 2009
23172       </div>
23173       <div class="body">
23174         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23175 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23176 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23177 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23178 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23179 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23180 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23181 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23182 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23183 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23184 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23185 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23186 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23187 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23188 now. :)</p>
23189
23190       </div>
23191       <div class="tags">
23192
23193
23194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23195
23196
23197       </div>
23198     </div>
23199     <div class="padding"></div>
23200
23201     <div class="entry">
23202       <div class="title">
23203         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
23204       </div>
23205       <div class="date">
23206         29th March 2009
23207       </div>
23208       <div class="body">
23209         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23210 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23211 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23212 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23213 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23214 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23215
23216 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23217 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23218 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23219 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23220 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23221 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23222 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23223 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23224 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23225 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23226 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23227 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23228 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23229
23230 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23231 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23232 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23233 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23234
23235 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23236 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23237
23238 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23239 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23240 new IETF work group?</p>
23241
23242       </div>
23243       <div class="tags">
23244
23245
23246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23247
23248
23249       </div>
23250     </div>
23251     <div class="padding"></div>
23252
23253     <div class="entry">
23254       <div class="title">
23255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
23256       </div>
23257       <div class="date">
23258         28th February 2009
23259       </div>
23260       <div class="body">
23261         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23262 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23263 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23264 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23265 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23266 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23267 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23268 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23269 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23270 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23271 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23272 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23273 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23274 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23275 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23276 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23277 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23278 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23279 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23280 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23281 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23282 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23283 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23284 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23285 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23286 machine.</p>
23287
23288 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23289 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23290 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23291 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23292 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23293 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23294 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23295
23296 <pre>
23297 use LWP::Simple;
23298 use POSIX;
23299 use WWW::Mechanize;
23300 use Date::Parse;
23301 [...]
23302 sub get_support_info {
23303     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23304     my $str;
23305
23306     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23307         # fetch website from Dell support
23308         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
23309         my $webpage = get($url);
23310         return undef unless ($webpage);
23311
23312         my $daysleft = -1;
23313         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23314         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23315             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23316             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23317             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23318
23319             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23320             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23321             my $lastend = "";
23322             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23323                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23324
23325                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23326                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23327                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23328                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23329                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23330                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23331                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23332             }
23333             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23334             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23335                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23336         }
23337     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23338         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23339         my $url =
23340             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23341         $mech->get($url);
23342         my $fields = {
23343             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23344             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23345             'country' => 'NO',
23346             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23347             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23348         };
23349         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23350                             fields      => $fields );
23351         # Next step is screen scraping
23352         my $content = $mech->content();
23353
23354         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23355         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23356         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23357         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23358
23359         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23360
23361         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23362             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23363                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23364             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23365             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23366                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23367             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23368                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23369
23370             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23371
23372             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23373                 if ($end lt $today);
23374         }
23375     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23376         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23377         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23378         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23379             my $content =
23380                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23381             if ($content) {
23382                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23383                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23384                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23385                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23386
23387                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23388                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23389
23390                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23391
23392                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23393                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23394                     if ($end lt $today);
23395             }
23396         }
23397     }
23398     return $str;
23399 }
23400 </pre>
23401
23402 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23403 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23404 from dmidecode.</p>
23405
23406 <pre>
23407 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23408                        "447707-B21");
23409 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23410 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23411                        "1234567");
23412 </pre>
23413
23414 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23415 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23416
23417 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23418 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23419 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23420 do so.</p>
23421
23422       </div>
23423       <div class="tags">
23424
23425
23426         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23427
23428
23429       </div>
23430     </div>
23431     <div class="padding"></div>
23432
23433     <div class="entry">
23434       <div class="title">
23435         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23436       </div>
23437       <div class="date">
23438         20th February 2009
23439       </div>
23440       <div class="body">
23441         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23442 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23443 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23444 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23445 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23446 the "missing" computer.</p>
23447
23448 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23449 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23450 code blocks as defined in the
23451 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23452 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23453 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23454 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23455 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23456 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23457 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23458 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23459 codes.</p>
23460
23461 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23462 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23463 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23464 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23465 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23466 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23467
23468 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23469 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23470 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23471 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23472 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23473 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23474 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23475 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23476 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23477 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23478
23479 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23480 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23481 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23482
23483       </div>
23484       <div class="tags">
23485
23486
23487         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
23488
23489
23490       </div>
23491     </div>
23492     <div class="padding"></div>
23493
23494     <div class="entry">
23495       <div class="title">
23496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
23497       </div>
23498       <div class="date">
23499         17th January 2009
23500       </div>
23501       <div class="body">
23502         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23503 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23504 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23505 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23506 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23507 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23508 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23509 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23510 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23511 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23512 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23513 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23514 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23515 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23516
23517 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23518 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23519 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23520 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23521 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23522 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23523 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23524 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23525 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23526 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23527 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23528 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23529 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23530 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23531 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23532 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23533 playing when the download is done.</p>
23534
23535 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23536 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23537 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23538 too.</p>
23539
23540 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23541 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23542 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23543 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23544
23545       </div>
23546       <div class="tags">
23547
23548
23549         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23550
23551
23552       </div>
23553     </div>
23554     <div class="padding"></div>
23555
23556     <div class="entry">
23557       <div class="title">
23558         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23559       </div>
23560       <div class="date">
23561         28th December 2008
23562       </div>
23563       <div class="body">
23564         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23565 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23566 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23567 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23568 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23569 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23570 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23571 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23572 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23573 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23574 source, sink and mixer applications and
23575 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23576 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23577 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23578 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23579 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23580 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23581 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23582 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23583 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23584
23585 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23586 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23587 larger stick as well.</p>
23588
23589       </div>
23590       <div class="tags">
23591
23592
23593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
23594
23595
23596       </div>
23597     </div>
23598     <div class="padding"></div>
23599
23600     <div class="entry">
23601       <div class="title">
23602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
23603       </div>
23604       <div class="date">
23605          7th December 2008
23606       </div>
23607       <div class="body">
23608         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23609 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23610 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23611 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23612 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23613 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23614 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23615 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23616
23617 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23618 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23619 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23620 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23621 of these cards.</p>
23622
23623       </div>
23624       <div class="tags">
23625
23626
23627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
23628
23629
23630       </div>
23631     </div>
23632     <div class="padding"></div>
23633
23634     <div class="entry">
23635       <div class="title">
23636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
23637       </div>
23638       <div class="date">
23639         25th November 2008
23640       </div>
23641       <div class="body">
23642         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23643 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23644 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23645 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23646 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23647 notes are available on
23648 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23649 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23650 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23651 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23652 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23653 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23654 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23655 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23656 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23657
23658 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23659 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23660
23661       </div>
23662       <div class="tags">
23663
23664
23665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23666
23667
23668       </div>
23669     </div>
23670     <div class="padding"></div>
23671
23672     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
23673     <div id="sidebar">
23674
23675
23676
23677 <h2>Archive</h2>
23678 <ul>
23679
23680 <li>2015
23681 <ul>
23682
23683 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23684
23685 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23686
23687 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23688
23689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23690
23691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23692
23693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23694
23695 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23696
23697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23698
23699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
23700
23701 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (3)</a></li>
23702
23703 </ul></li>
23704
23705 <li>2014
23706 <ul>
23707
23708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23709
23710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23711
23712 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23713
23714 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23715
23716 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23717
23718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23719
23720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23721
23722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23723
23724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23725
23726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23727
23728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23729
23730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23731
23732 </ul></li>
23733
23734 <li>2013
23735 <ul>
23736
23737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23738
23739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23740
23741 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23742
23743 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23744
23745 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23746
23747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23748
23749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23750
23751 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23752
23753 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23754
23755 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23756
23757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23758
23759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23760
23761 </ul></li>
23762
23763 <li>2012
23764 <ul>
23765
23766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23767
23768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23769
23770 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23771
23772 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23773
23774 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23775
23776 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23777
23778 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23779
23780 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23781
23782 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23783
23784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23785
23786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23787
23788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23789
23790 </ul></li>
23791
23792 <li>2011
23793 <ul>
23794
23795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23796
23797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23798
23799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23800
23801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23802
23803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23804
23805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23806
23807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23808
23809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23810
23811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23812
23813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23814
23815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23816
23817 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23818
23819 </ul></li>
23820
23821 <li>2010
23822 <ul>
23823
23824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23825
23826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23827
23828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23829
23830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23831
23832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23833
23834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23835
23836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23837
23838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23839
23840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23841
23842 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23843
23844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23845
23846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23847
23848 </ul></li>
23849
23850 <li>2009
23851 <ul>
23852
23853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23854
23855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23856
23857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23858
23859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23860
23861 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23862
23863 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23864
23865 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23866
23867 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23868
23869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23870
23871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23872
23873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23874
23875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23876
23877 </ul></li>
23878
23879 <li>2008
23880 <ul>
23881
23882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23883
23884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23885
23886 </ul></li>
23887
23888 </ul>
23889
23890
23891
23892 <h2>Tags</h2>
23893 <ul>
23894
23895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23896
23897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23898
23899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23900
23901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23902
23903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23904
23905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23906
23907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23908
23909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23910
23911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (112)</a></li>
23912
23913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23914
23915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23916
23917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23918
23919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (18)</a></li>
23920
23921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23922
23923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (290)</a></li>
23924
23925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23926
23927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23928
23929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (20)</a></li>
23930
23931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23932
23933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23934
23935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
23936
23937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23938
23939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23940
23941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23942
23943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23944
23945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23946
23947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23948
23949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23950
23951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23952
23953  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
23954
23955  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (265)</a></li>
23956
23957  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
23958
23959  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (20)</a></li>
23960
23961  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23962
23963  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (54)</a></li>
23964
23965  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (87)</a></li>
23966
23967  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23968
23969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23970
23971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23972
23973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23974
23975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23976
23977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23978
23979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23980
23981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23982
23983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (42)</a></li>
23984
23985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23986
23987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23988
23989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
23990
23991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23992
23993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
23994
23995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (34)</a></li>
23996
23997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23998
23999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
24000
24001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
24002
24003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
24004
24005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
24006
24007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
24008
24009 </ul>
24010
24011
24012     </div>
24013     <p style="text-align: right">
24014  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
24015 </p>
24016
24017   </body>
24018 </html>