blog/tags/debian/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged debian</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="debian.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         12th May 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
  32 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
  33 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
  34 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
  35 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
  36 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
  37 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
  38 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
  39 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
  40 great if you could help out with
  41 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
  42 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
  43
  44       </div>
  45       <div class="tags">
  46
  47
  48         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>.
  49
  50
  51       </div>
  52     </div>
  53     <div class="padding"></div>
  54
  55     <div class="entry">
  56       <div class="title">
  57         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
  58       </div>
  59       <div class="date">
  60          8th May 2016
  61       </div>
  62       <div class="body">
  63         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
  64 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
  65
  66 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
  67 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
  68 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
  69 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
  70 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
  71 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
  72 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
  73 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
  74 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
  75 players.</p>
  76
  77 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
  78 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
  79 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
  80 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
  81 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
  82 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
  83 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
  84 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
  85 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
  86 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
  87 support most file formats.</p>
  88
  89 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
  90 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
  91 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
  92 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
  93 listed first in the table.</p>
  94
  95 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
  96 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
  97 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
  98 support?</p>
  99
 100       </div>
 101       <div class="tags">
 102
 103
 104         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>.
 105
 106
 107       </div>
 108     </div>
 109     <div class="padding"></div>
 110
 111     <div class="entry">
 112       <div class="title">
 113         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
 114       </div>
 115       <div class="date">
 116          4th May 2016
 117       </div>
 118       <div class="body">
 119         A friend of mine made me aware of
 120 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
 121 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
 122 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
 123
 124 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
 125 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
 126 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
 127 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
 128 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
 129 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
 130 production started.</p>
 131
 132 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
 133 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
 134 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
 135
 136       </div>
 137       <div class="tags">
 138
 139
 140         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>.
 141
 142
 143       </div>
 144     </div>
 145     <div class="padding"></div>
 146
 147     <div class="entry">
 148       <div class="title">
 149         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
 150       </div>
 151       <div class="date">
 152         10th April 2016
 153       </div>
 154       <div class="body">
 155         <p>During this weekends
 156 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
 157 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
 158 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
 159 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
 160 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
 161 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
 162 contributing using
 163 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
 164 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
 165 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
 166 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
 167 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
 168 contributors</a>.</p>
 169
 170 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
 171 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
 172 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
 173 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
 174 available for many more languages.</p>
 175
 176       </div>
 177       <div class="tags">
 178
 179
 180         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>.
 181
 182
 183       </div>
 184     </div>
 185     <div class="padding"></div>
 186
 187     <div class="entry">
 188       <div class="title">
 189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
 190       </div>
 191       <div class="date">
 192          7th April 2016
 193       </div>
 194       <div class="body">
 195         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
 196 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
 197 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
 198 But I might be wrong.</p>
 199
 200 <p>According to
 201 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
 202 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
 203 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
 204 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
 205 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
 206 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
 207 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
 208 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
 209 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
 210 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
 211
 212 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
 213 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
 214 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
 215 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
 216 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
 217 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
 218 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
 219 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 220 team status page</a>, and
 221 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
 222 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
 223
 224 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
 225 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
 226 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
 227 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
 228 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
 229 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
 230 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
 231 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
 232 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
 233 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
 234 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
 235 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
 236
 237       </div>
 238       <div class="tags">
 239
 240
 241         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>.
 242
 243
 244       </div>
 245     </div>
 246     <div class="padding"></div>
 247
 248     <div class="entry">
 249       <div class="title">
 250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="date">
 253         23rd March 2016
 254       </div>
 255       <div class="body">
 256         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
 257 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
 258 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
 259 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
 260 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
 261 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
 262 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
 263 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
 264
 265 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
 266 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
 267 and lifetime prediction by running:
 268
 269 <p><pre>
 270 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
 271 </pre></p>
 272
 273 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
 274
 275 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
 276 entry yet):</p>
 277
 278 <p><pre>
 279 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
 280 </pre></p>
 281
 282 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
 283 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
 284 few years of data.</p>
 285
 286 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
 287 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
 288 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
 289 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
 290 know.  The issue is reported as
 291 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
 292 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
 293 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
 294 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
 295 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
 296
 297 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
 298 check out the
 299 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
 300 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
 301 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
 302 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 303 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
 304
 305       </div>
 306       <div class="tags">
 307
 308
 309         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>.
 310
 311
 312       </div>
 313     </div>
 314     <div class="padding"></div>
 315
 316     <div class="entry">
 317       <div class="title">
 318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="date">
 321         15th March 2016
 322       </div>
 323       <div class="body">
 324         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
 325 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
 326 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
 327 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
 328 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
 329 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
 330 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
 331 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
 332 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
 333 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
 334 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
 335
 336 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
 337 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
 338 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
 339 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
 340 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
 341 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
 342 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
 343 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
 344 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
 345 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
 346 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
 347
 348 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
 349
 350 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
 351 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
 352 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
 353 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
 354 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
 355 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
 356
 357 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
 358 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
 359 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
 360 and graphing.</p>
 361
 362 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
 363 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
 364 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
 365 on
 366 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 367 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
 368
 369       </div>
 370       <div class="tags">
 371
 372
 373         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>.
 374
 375
 376       </div>
 377     </div>
 378     <div class="padding"></div>
 379
 380     <div class="entry">
 381       <div class="title">
 382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
 383       </div>
 384       <div class="date">
 385         19th February 2016
 386       </div>
 387       <div class="body">
 388         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
 389 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
 390 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
 391 the code in the package in question, preferably in
 392 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
 393 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
 394
 395 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
 396 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
 397 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
 398 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
 399 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
 400 out what was wrong with
 401 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
 402 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
 403 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
 404 semi-automatically.</p>
 405
 406 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
 407 file based on the code in the source package,
 408 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
 409 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
 410 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
 411 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
 412 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
 413 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
 414 option in
 415 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
 416 blog posts from 2014</a>.
 417
 418 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
 419
 420 <p><pre>
 421 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
 422 </pre></p>
 423
 424 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
 425 this might not be the best option.</p>
 426
 427 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
 428 this approach in
 429 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
 430 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
 431 dpkg-copyright' option:
 432
 433 <p><pre>
 434 cme update dpkg-copyright
 435 </pre></p>
 436
 437 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
 438 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
 439
 440 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
 441 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
 442 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
 443 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
 444 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
 445 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
 446 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
 447 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
 448 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
 449 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
 450
 451 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
 452 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
 453 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
 454 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
 455
 456 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 457 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 458 planet.debian.org.</p>
 459
 460 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 461 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 462 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 463
 464 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 465 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 466
 467 <p><pre>
 468 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 469   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 470 </pre></p>
 471
 472 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 473 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 474 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 475 with my packages in the future.</p>
 476
 477 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 478 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 479 command line.</p>
 480
 481       </div>
 482       <div class="tags">
 483
 484
 485         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>.
 486
 487
 488       </div>
 489     </div>
 490     <div class="padding"></div>
 491
 492     <div class="entry">
 493       <div class="title">
 494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
 495       </div>
 496       <div class="date">
 497          4th February 2016
 498       </div>
 499       <div class="body">
 500         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 501 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 502 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 503 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 504 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 505 about. :)</p>
 506
 507 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 508 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 509 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 510 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 511 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 512 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 513
 514 <blockquote><pre>
 515 % apt install appstream
 516 [...]
 517 % apt update
 518 [...]
 519 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 520   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 521 firmware-qlogic
 522 %
 523 </pre></blockquote>
 524
 525 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 526 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 527 a way appstream can use.</p>
 528
 529 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 530 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 531 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 532 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 533 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 534 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 535
 536 <blockquote><pre>
 537 % apt install appstream
 538 [...]
 539 % apt update
 540 [...]
 541 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 542   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 543 bkchem
 544 phototonic
 545 inkscape
 546 shutter
 547 tetzle
 548 geeqie
 549 xia
 550 pinta
 551 gthumb
 552 karbon
 553 comix
 554 mirage
 555 viewnior
 556 postr
 557 ristretto
 558 kolourpaint4
 559 eog
 560 eom
 561 gimagereader
 562 midori
 563 %
 564 </pre></blockquote>
 565
 566 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 567 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 568
 569       </div>
 570       <div class="tags">
 571
 572
 573         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>.
 574
 575
 576       </div>
 577     </div>
 578     <div class="padding"></div>
 579
 580     <div class="entry">
 581       <div class="title">
 582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
 583       </div>
 584       <div class="date">
 585         24th January 2016
 586       </div>
 587       <div class="body">
 588         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 589 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 590 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 591 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 592 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 593 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 594 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 595 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 596 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 597 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 598 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 599 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 600 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 601 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 602 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 603 entities.</p>
 604
 605 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 606
 607 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 608 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 609 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 610 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 611 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 612 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 613 tool to do so is called
 614 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 615 discovered it when I read
 616 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 617 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 618 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 619 The python program was in Debian, but
 620 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 621 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 622 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 623 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 624 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 625 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 626 are now included
 627 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 628
 629 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 630 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 631 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 632 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 633 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 634 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 635 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 636 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 637 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 638 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 639 about yourself with the services.</p>
 640
 641 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 642 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 643 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 644 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 645 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 646 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 647 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 648 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 649 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 650 things.  A similar technique have been
 651 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 652 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 653 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 654 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 655 public.</p>
 656
 657 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 658 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 659 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 660 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 661
 662 <p>(I have uploaded
 663 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 664 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 665 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 666
 667       </div>
 668       <div class="tags">
 669
 670
 671         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 672
 673
 674       </div>
 675     </div>
 676     <div class="padding"></div>
 677
 678     <div class="entry">
 679       <div class="title">
 680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
 681       </div>
 682       <div class="date">
 683         15th January 2016
 684       </div>
 685       <div class="body">
 686         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 687 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 688 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 689 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 690 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 691 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 692 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 693 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 694 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 695 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 696 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 697 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 698 was not the first to propose this, as the
 699 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 700 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 701 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 702 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 703
 704 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 705 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 706 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 707 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 708 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 709
 710 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 711 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 712 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 713 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 714 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 715 done in /etc/.</p>
 716
 717 <blockquote><pre>
 718 apt install apt-transport-tor
 719 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 720 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 721 </pre></blockquote>
 722
 723 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 724 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 725 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 726 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 727
 728 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 729 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 730 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 731 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 732 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 733 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 734
 735 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 736 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 737 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 738 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 739 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 740
 741 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 742 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 743 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 744 system.</p>
 745
 746       </div>
 747       <div class="tags">
 748
 749
 750         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>.
 751
 752
 753       </div>
 754     </div>
 755     <div class="padding"></div>
 756
 757     <div class="entry">
 758       <div class="title">
 759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
 760       </div>
 761       <div class="date">
 762         23rd December 2015
 763       </div>
 764       <div class="body">
 765         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 766 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 767 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 768 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 769 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 770 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 771
 772 <p>A few days I came across
 773 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 774 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 775 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 776 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 777 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 778 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 779 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 780 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 781 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 782 discovered the developer
 783 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 784 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 785 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 786 archive.</p>
 787
 788 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 789 it into Debian, where it currently
 790 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 791 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 792
 793 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 794 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 795 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 796 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 797 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 798 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 799 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 800 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 801 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 802 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 803 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 804 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 805
 806 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 807 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 808 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 809 package show up in unstable.</p>
 810
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="tags">
 813
 814
 815         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 816
 817
 818       </div>
 819     </div>
 820     <div class="padding"></div>
 821
 822     <div class="entry">
 823       <div class="title">
 824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="date">
 827         20th December 2015
 828       </div>
 829       <div class="body">
 830         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 831 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 832 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 833 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 834 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 835 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 836 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 837 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 838 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 839 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 840 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 841 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 842 with.</p>
 843
 844 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 845 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 846 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 847 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 848 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 849 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 850 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 851 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 852 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 853 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 854 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 855
 856 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 857 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 858 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 859 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 860 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 861 how do add the required
 862 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 863 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 864 this content:</p>
 865
 866 <blockquote><pre>
 867 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 868 &lt;component&gt;
 869   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 870   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 871   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 872   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 873   &lt;description&gt;
 874     &lt;p&gt;
 875       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 876       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 877       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 878       launcher.
 879     &lt;/p&gt;
 880   &lt;/description&gt;
 881   &lt;provides&gt;
 882     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 883   &lt;/provides&gt;
 884 &lt;/component&gt;
 885 </pre></blockquote>
 886
 887 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 888 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 889 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 890 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 891 0202.</p>
 892
 893 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 894 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 895 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 896 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 897 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 898 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 899 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 900 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 901
 902 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 903 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 904 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 905 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 906 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 907
 908 <blockquote><pre>
 909 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 910 </pre></blockquote>
 911
 912 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 913 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 914 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 915 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 916 question.</p>
 917
 918 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 919 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 920
 921 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 922 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 923
 924 <blockquote><pre>
 925 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 926 </pre></blockquote>
 927
 928 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 929 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 930 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 931
 932       </div>
 933       <div class="tags">
 934
 935
 936         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>.
 937
 938
 939       </div>
 940     </div>
 941     <div class="padding"></div>
 942
 943     <div class="entry">
 944       <div class="title">
 945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
 946       </div>
 947       <div class="date">
 948         30th November 2015
 949       </div>
 950       <div class="body">
 951         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 952 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 953 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 954 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 955 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 956
 957 <blockquote>
 958
 959 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
 960
 961 <blockquote>
 962 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 963
 964 The first step is to choose a
 965 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 966 code.<br/>
 967
 968 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 969 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 970
 971 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 972 work<br/>
 973
 974 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 975 </blockquote>
 976
 977 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 978 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 979 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 980 0x57</a></small></p>
 981
 982 <p>As the Debian Website
 983 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 984 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 985 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 986 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 987 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 988 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 989 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 990 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 991 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 992 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 993 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 994 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 995 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 996 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 997 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 998 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 999 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
1000 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
1001 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
1002 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
1003 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
1004 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
1005 In March the SFC supported a
1006 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
1007 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
1008 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
1009 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
1010 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
1011 conferences
1012 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
1013 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
1014 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
1015 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
1016 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
1017 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
1018 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
1019 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
1020 Software.</p>
1021
1022 <p>If you support Free Software,
1023 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
1024 what the SFC do, agree with their
1025 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
1026 principles</a>, are happy about their
1027 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
1028 work on a project that is an SFC
1029 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
1030 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
1031 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
1032 Allan Webber</a>,
1033 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
1034 Smith</a>,
1035 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
1036 Bacon</a>, myself and
1037 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
1038 becoming a
1039 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
1040 next week your donation will be
1041 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
1042 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
1043 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
1044 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
1045 social media accounts.</p>
1046
1047 </blockquote>
1048
1049 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
1050 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
1051 supporter too?</p>
1052
1053       </div>
1054       <div class="tags">
1055
1056
1057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1058
1059
1060       </div>
1061     </div>
1062     <div class="padding"></div>
1063
1064     <div class="entry">
1065       <div class="title">
1066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
1067       </div>
1068       <div class="date">
1069         17th November 2015
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="body">
1072         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
1073 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
1074 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
1075 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
1076 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
1077 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
1078 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
1079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
1080 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
1081 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
1082
1083 <pre>
1084 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
1085       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
1086 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
1087 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
1088 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1089 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1090 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
1091 </pre>
1092
1093 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
1094 my old key.</p>
1095
1096 <p>If you signed my old key
1097 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
1098 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
1099 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
1100 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
1101
1102       </div>
1103       <div class="tags">
1104
1105
1106         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>.
1107
1108
1109       </div>
1110     </div>
1111     <div class="padding"></div>
1112
1113     <div class="entry">
1114       <div class="title">
1115         <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>
1116       </div>
1117       <div class="date">
1118         24th September 2015
1119       </div>
1120       <div class="body">
1121         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
1122 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
1123 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
1124 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
1125 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
1126 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
1127 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
1128
1129 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
1130
1131 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
1132 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
1133 by someone else.  I found
1134 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
1135 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
1136 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
1137 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
1138 from him.  Via
1139 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
1140 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
1141 discovered
1142 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
1143 available in Debian.</p>
1144
1145 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
1146 battery stats ever since. Now my
1147 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
1148 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
1149 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
1150 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
1151
1152 <pre>
1153 #!/bin/sh
1154 # Inspired by
1155 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
1156 # See also
1157 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
1158 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
1159
1160 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
1161     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
1162
1163 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
1164     (
1165         printf "timestamp,"
1166         for f in $files; do
1167             printf "%s," $f
1168         done
1169         echo
1170     ) > "$logfile"
1171 fi
1172
1173 log_battery() {
1174     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
1175     # when several log processes run in parallel.
1176     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
1177         for f in $files; do \
1178             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
1179         done)
1180     echo "$msg"
1181 }
1182
1183 cd /sys/class/power_supply
1184
1185 for bat in BAT*; do
1186     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
1187 done
1188 </pre>
1189
1190 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
1191 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
1192 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
1193 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
1194 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
1195 The code for the Debian package
1196 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
1197 available on github</a>.</p>
1198
1199 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
1200
1201 <pre>
1202 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
1203 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
1204 [...]
1205 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1206 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1207 </pre>
1208
1209 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
1210 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
1211 battery.</p>
1212
1213 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
1214 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
1215 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
1216 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
1217 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
1218 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
1219 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
1220 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
1221 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
1222 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
1223 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
1224 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
1225 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
1226 Linux too.</p>
1227
1228 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
1229 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
1230 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
1231 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
1232 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
1233 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
1234 load).</p>
1235
1236 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
1237 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
1238 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
1239 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
1240 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
1241 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
1242 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
1243 those.</p>
1244
1245 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
1246 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
1247 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
1248 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
1249 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
1250 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
1251 specific.</p>
1252
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="tags">
1255
1256
1257         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>.
1258
1259
1260       </div>
1261     </div>
1262     <div class="padding"></div>
1263
1264     <div class="entry">
1265       <div class="title">
1266         <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>
1267       </div>
1268       <div class="date">
1269          5th July 2015
1270       </div>
1271       <div class="body">
1272         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1273 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
1274 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
1275 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1276 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1277 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1278 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1279 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
1280 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1281 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
1282 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
1283
1284 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1285 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
1286 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
1287 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1288 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
1289 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1290 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1291
1292 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1293 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1294 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1295 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1296 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1297 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1298 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1299 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1300 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1301 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1302 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1303 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1304 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1305 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1306 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1307
1308 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1309 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1310 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1311 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1312
1313 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1314 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1315
1316 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1317 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1318 different
1319 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1320 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1321
1322       </div>
1323       <div class="tags">
1324
1325
1326         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>.
1327
1328
1329       </div>
1330     </div>
1331     <div class="padding"></div>
1332
1333     <div class="entry">
1334       <div class="title">
1335         <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>
1336       </div>
1337       <div class="date">
1338          3rd July 2015
1339       </div>
1340       <div class="body">
1341         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1342 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1343 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1344 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1345 flickering.</p>
1346
1347 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1348 still as
1349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1350 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1351 good help from
1352 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1353 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1354 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1355 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1356 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1357 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1358 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1359 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1360 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1361
1362 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1363 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1364 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1365 have suggestions.</p>
1366
1367 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1368 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1369 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1370
1371       </div>
1372       <div class="tags">
1373
1374
1375         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>.
1376
1377
1378       </div>
1379     </div>
1380     <div class="padding"></div>
1381
1382     <div class="entry">
1383       <div class="title">
1384         <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>
1385       </div>
1386       <div class="date">
1387         22nd November 2014
1388       </div>
1389       <div class="body">
1390         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1391 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1392 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1393 courtesy of
1394 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1395 Schubert</a> and
1396 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1397 McVittie</a>.
1398
1399 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1400 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1401 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1402 you upgrade:</p>
1403
1404 <p><blockquote><pre>
1405 Package: systemd-sysv
1406 Pin: release o=Debian
1407 Pin-Priority: -1
1408 </pre></blockquote><p>
1409
1410 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1411 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1412 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1413 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1414 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1415
1416 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1417 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1418 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1419 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1420 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1421 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1422
1423 <p><blockquote><pre>
1424 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1425 </pre></blockquote><p>
1426
1427 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1428
1429 <p><blockquote><pre>
1430 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1431 </pre></blockquote><p>
1432
1433 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1434 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1435
1436 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1437 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1438 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1439 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1440 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1441 Jessie is released.</p>
1442
1443 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1444 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1445 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1446 line.</p>
1447
1448       </div>
1449       <div class="tags">
1450
1451
1452         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>.
1453
1454
1455       </div>
1456     </div>
1457     <div class="padding"></div>
1458
1459     <div class="entry">
1460       <div class="title">
1461         <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>
1462       </div>
1463       <div class="date">
1464         10th November 2014
1465       </div>
1466       <div class="body">
1467         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1468 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1469 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1470
1471 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1472 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1473 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1474 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1475 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1476 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1477 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1478 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1479 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1480 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1481 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1482 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1483 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1484 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1485 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1486
1487 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1488 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1489 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1490 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1491 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1492 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1493 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1494 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1495 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1496 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1497 were fairly easy, and
1498 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1499 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1500 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1501 useful approach.</p>
1502
1503 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1504 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1505 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1506 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1507 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1508 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1509 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1510 this:</p>
1511
1512 <p><blockquote><pre>
1513 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1514   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1515 </pre></blockquote></p>
1516
1517 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1518 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1519
1520 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1521 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1522 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1523 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1524 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1525 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1526 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1527 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1528 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1529 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1530 system.</p>
1531
1532 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1533 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1534 SMTorP. :)</p>
1535
1536       </div>
1537       <div class="tags">
1538
1539
1540         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>.
1541
1542
1543       </div>
1544     </div>
1545     <div class="padding"></div>
1546
1547     <div class="entry">
1548       <div class="title">
1549         <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>
1550       </div>
1551       <div class="date">
1552         22nd October 2014
1553       </div>
1554       <div class="body">
1555         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1556 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1557 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1558 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1559 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1560 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1561 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1562 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1563 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1564 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1565 lists I recently took over:</p>
1566
1567 <p><blockquote><pre>
1568 % time listadmin xiph
1569 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1570 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1571
1572 real    0m1.709s
1573 user    0m0.232s
1574 sys     0m0.012s
1575 %
1576 </pre></blockquote></p>
1577
1578 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1579 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1580 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1581 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1582 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1583 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1584 program.</p>
1585
1586 <p>If you install
1587 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1588 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1589 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1590
1591 <p><blockquote><pre>
1592 username username@example.org
1593 spamlevel 23
1594 default discard
1595 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1596
1597 password secret
1598 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1599 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1600
1601 password hidden
1602 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1603 </pre></blockquote></p>
1604
1605 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1606 learn the details.</p>
1607
1608 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1609 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1610 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1611 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1612
1613 <p><blockquote><pre>
1614 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1615 </pre></blockquote></p>
1616
1617 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1618 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1619 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1620 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1621 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1622 email.</p>
1623
1624 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1625 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1626 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1627 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1628 software.</p>
1629
1630 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1631 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1632 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1633
1634 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1635 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1636 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1637 sure why.</p>
1638
1639       </div>
1640       <div class="tags">
1641
1642
1643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1644
1645
1646       </div>
1647     </div>
1648     <div class="padding"></div>
1649
1650     <div class="entry">
1651       <div class="title">
1652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1653       </div>
1654       <div class="date">
1655         17th October 2014
1656       </div>
1657       <div class="body">
1658         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1659 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1660 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1661 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1662 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1663 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1664 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1665
1666 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1667 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1668 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1669 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1670 of this story.)</p>
1671
1672 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1673 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1674 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1675 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1676 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1677 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1678 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1679 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1680 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1681 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1682
1683 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1684 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1685 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1686 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1687
1688 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1689 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1690
1691 <p><blockquote><pre>
1692 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1693 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1694 </pre></blockquote></p>
1695
1696 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1697 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1698 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1699 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1700 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1701 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1702 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1703 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1704
1705 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1706 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1707
1708 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1709 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1710 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1711 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1712 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1713
1714 <p><blockquote><pre>
1715 Task: isenkram-packages
1716 Section: hardware
1717 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1718  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1719  proposed.
1720 Test-new-install: show show
1721 Relevance: 8
1722 Packages: for-current-hardware
1723
1724 Task: isenkram-firmware
1725 Section: hardware
1726 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1727  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1728  packages are proposed.
1729 Test-new-install: mark show
1730 Relevance: 8
1731 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1732 </pre></blockquote></p>
1733
1734 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1735 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1736 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1737 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1738 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1739
1740 <p><blockquote><pre>
1741 #!/bin/sh
1742 #
1743 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1744 export PATH
1745 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1746 </pre></blockquote></p>
1747
1748 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1749 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1750
1751 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1752 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1753 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1754 install.</p>
1755
1756 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1757 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1758 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1759
1760       </div>
1761       <div class="tags">
1762
1763
1764         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>.
1765
1766
1767       </div>
1768     </div>
1769     <div class="padding"></div>
1770
1771     <div class="entry">
1772       <div class="title">
1773         <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>
1774       </div>
1775       <div class="date">
1776          4th October 2014
1777       </div>
1778       <div class="body">
1779         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1780 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1781 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1782 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1783
1784 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1785
1786 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1787 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1788 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1789
1790       </div>
1791       <div class="tags">
1792
1793
1794         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>.
1795
1796
1797       </div>
1798     </div>
1799     <div class="padding"></div>
1800
1801     <div class="entry">
1802       <div class="title">
1803         <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>
1804       </div>
1805       <div class="date">
1806          4th October 2014
1807       </div>
1808       <div class="body">
1809         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1810 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1811 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1812 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1813 Dibb.</p>
1814
1815 <p>I just wrapped up
1816 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1817 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1818 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1819 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1820 0.17.</p>
1821
1822 <ul>
1823
1824  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1825  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1826    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1827  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1828  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1829  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1830  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1831  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1832  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1833    the palette size is the same.</li>
1834  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1835  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1836  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1837  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1838    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1839
1840 </ul>
1841
1842 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1843 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1844 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1845
1846       </div>
1847       <div class="tags">
1848
1849
1850         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>.
1851
1852
1853       </div>
1854     </div>
1855     <div class="padding"></div>
1856
1857     <div class="entry">
1858       <div class="title">
1859         <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>
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="date">
1862         26th September 2014
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="body">
1865         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1866 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1867 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1868 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1869 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1870 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1871 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1872 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1873 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1874 future.  The
1875 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1876 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1877 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1878 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1879 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1880
1881 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1882 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1883 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1884 or rsync (use
1885 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1886 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1887 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1888 install with some tweaking.</p>
1889
1890 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1891 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1892
1893 <p><blockquote><pre>
1894 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1895 </pre></blockquote></p>
1896
1897 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1898 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1899 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1900 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1901
1902 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1903 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1904 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1905 your need.</p>
1906
1907 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1908 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1909 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1910 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1911 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1912 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1913 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1914 days.</p>
1915
1916 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1917 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1918 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1919 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1920 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1921 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1922 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1923 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1924 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1925
1926 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1927 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1928 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1929
1930       </div>
1931       <div class="tags">
1932
1933
1934         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>.
1935
1936
1937       </div>
1938     </div>
1939     <div class="padding"></div>
1940
1941     <div class="entry">
1942       <div class="title">
1943         <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>
1944       </div>
1945       <div class="date">
1946         25th September 2014
1947       </div>
1948       <div class="body">
1949         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1950 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1951 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1952 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1953 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1954 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1955 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1956 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1957 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1958 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1959 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1960 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1961 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1962
1963 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1964 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1965 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1966 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1967 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1968 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1969 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1970 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1971 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1972 list</a>. :)</p>
1973
1974       </div>
1975       <div class="tags">
1976
1977
1978         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>.
1979
1980
1981       </div>
1982     </div>
1983     <div class="padding"></div>
1984
1985     <div class="entry">
1986       <div class="title">
1987         <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>
1988       </div>
1989       <div class="date">
1990         16th September 2014
1991       </div>
1992       <div class="body">
1993         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1994 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1995 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1996 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1997 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1998 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1999 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2000 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2001 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2002 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2003 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2004 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2005 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2006 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2007
2008 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2009 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2010 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2011 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2012 depend on the small and clever package
2013 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2014 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2015 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2016 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2017 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2018 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2019 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2020 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2021 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2022 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2023 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2024
2025 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2026 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2027 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2028 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2029 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2030 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2031 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2032 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2033 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2034 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2035 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2036 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2037 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2038 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2039 dialog.</p>
2040
2041 <p><table>
2042
2043 <tr>
2044 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2045 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2046 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2047 <th>Reduction</th>
2048 </tr>
2049
2050 <tr>
2051 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2052 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2053 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2054 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2055 </tr>
2056
2057 <tr>
2058 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
2059 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
2060 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
2061 <td>23 min 40%</td>
2062 </tr>
2063
2064 <tr>
2065 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
2066 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
2067 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
2068 <td>11 min 50%</td>
2069 </tr>
2070
2071 <tr>
2072 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
2073 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
2074 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
2075 <td>2 min 33%</td>
2076 </tr>
2077
2078 <tr>
2079 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
2080 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
2081 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
2082 <td>4 min 21%</td>
2083 </tr>
2084
2085 </table></p>
2086
2087 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
2088 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
2089 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
2090 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
2091 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
2092 installed.</p>
2093
2094 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
2095 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
2096 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
2097 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
2098 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
2099 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
2100 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
2101 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
2102 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
2103 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
2104 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
2105 for the entire installation.</p>
2106
2107 <p>I've implemented this in the
2108 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
2109 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
2110 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
2111 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
2112 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
2113
2114 <p><blockquote><pre>
2115 #!/bin/sh
2116 set -e
2117 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2118 info() {
2119     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
2120 }
2121 error() {
2122     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
2123 }
2124 override_install() {
2125     apt-install eatmydata || true
2126     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2127         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2128             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2129             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2130             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2131                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2132                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2133                     > /target$file.edu
2134                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2135                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2136                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2137                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2138             else
2139                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2140             fi
2141         done
2142     else
2143         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2144     fi
2145 }
2146
2147 override_install
2148 </pre></blockquote></p>
2149
2150 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2151 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2152
2153 <p><blockquote><pre>
2154 #! /bin/sh -e
2155 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2156 error() {
2157     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2158 }
2159 remove_install_override() {
2160     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2161         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2162         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2163             rm /target$file
2164             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2165                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2166             rm /target$file.edu
2167         else
2168             error "Missing divert for $file."
2169         fi
2170     done
2171     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2172 }
2173
2174 remove_install_override
2175 </pre></blockquote></p>
2176
2177 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2178 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2179 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2180
2181 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2182 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2183 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2184 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2185 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2186 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2187 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2188 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2189 everyone.</p>
2190
2191 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2192 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2193 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2194 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2195
2196 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2197 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2198 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2199 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2200 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2201
2202 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2203 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2204 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2205 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2206 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2207
2208       </div>
2209       <div class="tags">
2210
2211
2212         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>.
2213
2214
2215       </div>
2216     </div>
2217     <div class="padding"></div>
2218
2219     <div class="entry">
2220       <div class="title">
2221         <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>
2222       </div>
2223       <div class="date">
2224         10th September 2014
2225       </div>
2226       <div class="body">
2227         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2228 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2229 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2230 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2231 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2232 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2233 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2234 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2235 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2236 those problems are gone now.</p>
2237
2238 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2239 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2240 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2241 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2242 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2243
2244 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2245 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2246 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2247
2248 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2249 line:</p>
2250
2251 <p><blockquote><pre>
2252 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2253 </pre></blockquote></p>
2254
2255 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2256 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2257 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2258 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2259
2260 <p><blockquote><pre>
2261 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2262 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2263 %
2264 </pre></blockquote></p>
2265
2266 <p>Now if only
2267 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2268 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2269 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2270 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2271 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2272 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2273 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2274 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2275 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2276
2277       </div>
2278       <div class="tags">
2279
2280
2281         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>.
2282
2283
2284       </div>
2285     </div>
2286     <div class="padding"></div>
2287
2288     <div class="entry">
2289       <div class="title">
2290         <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>
2291       </div>
2292       <div class="date">
2293         17th June 2014
2294       </div>
2295       <div class="body">
2296         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2297 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2298 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2299 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2300 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2301
2302 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2303 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2304 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2305 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2306 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2307 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2308 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2309 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2310 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2311 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2312 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2313 goals.</p>
2314
2315 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2316 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2317 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2318 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2319 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2320 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2321 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2322 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2323 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2324 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2325 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2326 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2327 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2328 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2329 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2330 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2331 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2332 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2333 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2334 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2335 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2336 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2337 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2338 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2339
2340 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2341 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2342 track the English original.  For this we use the
2343 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2344 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2345 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2346 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2347 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2348 files), which the translations update with the native language
2349 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2350 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2351 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2352 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2353 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2354 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2355 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2356 of the documentation.</p>
2357
2358 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2359 recommend using
2360 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2361 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2362 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2363 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2364 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2365 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2366 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2367 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2368
2369 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2370 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2371 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2372 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2373 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2374 translated images by storing translated versions in
2375 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2376 package maintainers know more.</p>
2377
2378 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2379 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2380 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2381 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2382 PDF version</a> or the
2383 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2384 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2385 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2386
2387 <p>To learn more, check out
2388 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2389 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2390 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2391 manual on the wiki</a> and
2392 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2393 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2394
2395       </div>
2396       <div class="tags">
2397
2398
2399         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>.
2400
2401
2402       </div>
2403     </div>
2404     <div class="padding"></div>
2405
2406     <div class="entry">
2407       <div class="title">
2408         <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>
2409       </div>
2410       <div class="date">
2411         23rd April 2014
2412       </div>
2413       <div class="body">
2414         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2415 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2416 So I implemented one, using
2417 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2418 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2419 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2420 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2421 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2422 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2423
2424 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2425 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2426 packages to install.  The first part is in
2427 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2428 this:</p>
2429
2430 <p><blockquote><pre>
2431 Task: isenkram
2432 Section: hardware
2433 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2434  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2435  proposed.
2436 Test-new-install: mark show
2437 Relevance: 8
2438 Packages: for-current-hardware
2439 </pre></blockquote></p>
2440
2441 <p>The second part is in
2442 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2443 this:</p>
2444
2445 <p><blockquote><pre>
2446 #!/bin/sh
2447 #
2448 (
2449     isenkram-lookup
2450     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2451 ) | sort -u
2452 </pre></blockquote></p>
2453
2454 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2455 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2456 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2457 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2458 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2459 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2460
2461 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2462 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2463 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2464 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2465 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2466 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2467 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2468 the python-apt code (bug
2469 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2470 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2471 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2472 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2473 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2474 unstable today.</p>
2475
2476 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2477 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2478 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2479 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2480 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2481 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2482 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2483 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2484 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2485
2486 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2487 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2488 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2489 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2490 package.  See also
2491 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2492 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2493 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2494 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2495
2496       </div>
2497       <div class="tags">
2498
2499
2500         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>.
2501
2502
2503       </div>
2504     </div>
2505     <div class="padding"></div>
2506
2507     <div class="entry">
2508       <div class="title">
2509         <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>
2510       </div>
2511       <div class="date">
2512         15th April 2014
2513       </div>
2514       <div class="body">
2515         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2516 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2517 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2518 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2519 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2520 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2521
2522 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2523 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2524 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2525 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2526 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2527 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2528 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2529
2530 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2531 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2532 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2533 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2534 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2535 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2536 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2537 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2538 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2539 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2540 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2541 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2542
2543 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2544 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2545 become root:</p>
2546
2547 <p><pre>
2548 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2549   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2550   u-boot-tools
2551 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2552   freedom-maker
2553 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2554 </pre></p>
2555
2556 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2557 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2558 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2559 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2560 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2561 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2562 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2563 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2564
2565 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2566 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2567 the preseed values:</p>
2568
2569 <p><pre>
2570 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2571 </pre></p>
2572
2573 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2574 it still work.</p>
2575
2576 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2577 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2578 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2579 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2580 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2581 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2582 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2583
2584 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2585 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2586 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2587 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2588 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2589 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2590
2591       </div>
2592       <div class="tags">
2593
2594
2595         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>.
2596
2597
2598       </div>
2599     </div>
2600     <div class="padding"></div>
2601
2602     <div class="entry">
2603       <div class="title">
2604         <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>
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="date">
2607          9th April 2014
2608       </div>
2609       <div class="body">
2610         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2611 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2612 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2613 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2614 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2615 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2616 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2617 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2618 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2619 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2620 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2621 have looked at a system called
2622 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2623 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2624
2625 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2626 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2627 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2628 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2629 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2630 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2631 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2632 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2633 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2634 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2635 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2636 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2637 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2638
2639 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2640 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2641 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2642 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2643 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2644 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2645 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2646 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2647 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2648 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2649 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2650 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2651 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2652 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2653 account.</p>
2654
2655 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2656 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2657 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2658 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2659 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2660 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2661 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2662
2663 <p><blockquote><pre>
2664 [s3c]
2665 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2666 backend-login: API-login
2667 backend-password: API-password
2668 fs-passphrase: local-password
2669 </pre></blockquote></p>
2670
2671 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2672 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2673 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2674 details and password to create it:</p>
2675
2676 <p><blockquote><pre>
2677 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2678 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2679   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2680 Enter backend login:
2681 Enter backend password:
2682 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2683 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2684 Enter encryption password:
2685 Confirm encryption password:
2686 Generating random encryption key...
2687 Creating metadata tables...
2688 Dumping metadata...
2689 ..objects..
2690 ..blocks..
2691 ..inodes..
2692 ..inode_blocks..
2693 ..symlink_targets..
2694 ..names..
2695 ..contents..
2696 ..ext_attributes..
2697 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2698 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2699 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2700
2701 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2702
2703 <p><blockquote><pre>
2704 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2705   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2706 Using 4 upload threads.
2707 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2708 Reading metadata...
2709 ..objects..
2710 ..blocks..
2711 ..inodes..
2712 ..inode_blocks..
2713 ..symlink_targets..
2714 ..names..
2715 ..contents..
2716 ..ext_attributes..
2717 Mounting filesystem...
2718 # df -h /s3ql
2719 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2720 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2721 #
2722 </pre></blockquote></p>
2723
2724 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2725 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2726 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2727 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2728 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2729 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2730
2731 <p><blockquote><pre>
2732 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2733 #
2734 </pre></blockquote></p>
2735
2736 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2737 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2738 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2739 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2740 file system:</p>
2741
2742 <p><blockquote><pre>
2743 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2744 Using cached metadata.
2745 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2746 Checking DB integrity...
2747 Creating temporary extra indices...
2748 Checking lost+found...
2749 Checking cached objects...
2750 Checking names (refcounts)...
2751 Checking contents (names)...
2752 Checking contents (inodes)...
2753 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2754 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2755 Checking objects (backend)...
2756 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2757 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2758 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2759 Checking objects (sizes)...
2760 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2761 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2762 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2763 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2764 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2765 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2766 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2767 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2768 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2769 Checking directory reachability...
2770 Checking unix conventions...
2771 Checking referential integrity...
2772 Dropping temporary indices...
2773 Backing up old metadata...
2774 Dumping metadata...
2775 ..objects..
2776 ..blocks..
2777 ..inodes..
2778 ..inode_blocks..
2779 ..symlink_targets..
2780 ..names..
2781 ..contents..
2782 ..ext_attributes..
2783 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2784 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2785 #
2786 </pre></blockquote></p>
2787
2788 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2789 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2790 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2791 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2792 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2793 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2794 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2795 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2796 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2797 working set.</p>
2798
2799 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2800 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2801 busy:</p>
2802
2803 <p><blockquote><pre>
2804 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2805   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2806 Using 8 upload threads.
2807 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2808 #
2809 </pre></blockquote></p>
2810
2811 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2812 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2813 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2814 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2815 s3qlctrl:
2816
2817 <p><blockquote><pre>
2818 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2819 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2820 #
2821 </pre></blockquote></p>
2822
2823 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2824 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2825 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2826 a report:</p>
2827
2828 <p><blockquote><pre>
2829 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2830 Directory entries:    9141
2831 Inodes:               9143
2832 Data blocks:          8851
2833 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2834 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2835 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2836 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2837 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2838 #
2839 </pre></blockquote></p>
2840
2841 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2842 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2843 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2844 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2845 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2846 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2847 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2848 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2849 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2850 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2851 best.</p>
2852
2853 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2854 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2855 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2856 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2857 poster is titled
2858 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2859 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2860 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2861 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2862 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2863
2864 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2865 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2866 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2867 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2868 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2869 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2870 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2871 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2872
2873 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2874 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2875 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2876 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2877 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2878 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2879 only read from it.</p>
2880
2881 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2882 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2883 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2884
2885       </div>
2886       <div class="tags">
2887
2888
2889         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2890
2891
2892       </div>
2893     </div>
2894     <div class="padding"></div>
2895
2896     <div class="entry">
2897       <div class="title">
2898         <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>
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="date">
2901         14th March 2014
2902       </div>
2903       <div class="body">
2904         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2905 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2906 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2907 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2908 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2909 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2910 release (0.2).</p>
2911
2912 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2913 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2914 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2915 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2916 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2917 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2918 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2919 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2920 and build using
2921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2922 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2923
2924 <pre>
2925 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2926   freedom-maker
2927 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2928   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2929   u-boot-tools
2930 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2931 </pre>
2932
2933 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2934 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2935 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2936 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2937 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2938 kpartx call.</p>
2939
2940 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2941 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2942 the preseed values:</p>
2943
2944 <pre>
2945 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2946 </pre>
2947
2948 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2949 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2950 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2951 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2952 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2953 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2954
2955 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2956 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2957 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2958 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2959 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2960 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2961
2962       </div>
2963       <div class="tags">
2964
2965
2966         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>.
2967
2968
2969       </div>
2970     </div>
2971     <div class="padding"></div>
2972
2973     <div class="entry">
2974       <div class="title">
2975         <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>
2976       </div>
2977       <div class="date">
2978         22nd February 2014
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="body">
2981         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2982 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2983 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2984 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2985 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2986 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2987 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2988 proper home since then.</p>
2989
2990 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2991 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2992 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2993 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2994 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2995
2996 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2997 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2998 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2999 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
3000 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
3001 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
3002 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
3003 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
3004 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
3005
3006       </div>
3007       <div class="tags">
3008
3009
3010         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>.
3011
3012
3013       </div>
3014     </div>
3015     <div class="padding"></div>
3016
3017     <div class="entry">
3018       <div class="title">
3019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
3020       </div>
3021       <div class="date">
3022          3rd February 2014
3023       </div>
3024       <div class="body">
3025         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
3026 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
3027 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
3028 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
3029 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
3030 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
3031 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
3032 <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>,
3033 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
3034
3035 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
3036 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
3037 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
3038 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
3039 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
3040 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
3041
3042 <p><blockquote><pre>
3043 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
3044 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
3045 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
3046 dhclient /dev/eth0
3047 </pre></blockquote></p>
3048
3049 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
3050 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
3051 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
3052
3053 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
3054 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
3055 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
3056 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
3057 side.</p>
3058
3059 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
3060 stuff:</p>
3061
3062 <p><blockquote><pre>
3063 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3064 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
3065 EOF
3066 apt-get update
3067 apt-get dist-upgrade
3068 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
3069     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
3070 update-alternatives --config runsystem
3071 </pre></blockquote></p>
3072
3073 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
3074 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
3075 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
3076 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
3077 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
3078 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
3079 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
3080 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
3081 ssh instead.
3082
3083 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
3084 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
3085 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
3086 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
3087 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
3088 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
3089
3090 <p><blockquote><pre>
3091 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
3092 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
3093 EOF
3094 </pre></blockquote></p>
3095
3096 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
3097 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
3098 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
3099 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
3100
3101 <p><blockquote><pre>
3102 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
3103 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
3104 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
3105 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
3106 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
3107 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
3108 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
3109 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
3110 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
3111 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
3112 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
3113 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
3114 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
3115 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
3116 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
3117 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
3118 #
3119 </pre></blockquote></p>
3120
3121 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
3122 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
3123 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3124 command line stuff.<p>
3125
3126       </div>
3127       <div class="tags">
3128
3129
3130         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>.
3131
3132
3133       </div>
3134     </div>
3135     <div class="padding"></div>
3136
3137     <div class="entry">
3138       <div class="title">
3139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3140       </div>
3141       <div class="date">
3142         14th January 2014
3143       </div>
3144       <div class="body">
3145         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3146 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3147 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3148 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3149 the source.  The company behind it provide
3150 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3151 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3152 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3153 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3154 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3155 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3156 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3157 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3158 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3159 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3160 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3161 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3162 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3163 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3164 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3165 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3166 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3167 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3168 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3169
3170 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3171
3172 <ul>
3173
3174   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3175   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3176   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3177
3178 </ul>
3179
3180 <p>You can
3181 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3182 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3183 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3184 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3185 include a test suite check.</p>
3186
3187       </div>
3188       <div class="tags">
3189
3190
3191         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>.
3192
3193
3194       </div>
3195     </div>
3196     <div class="padding"></div>
3197
3198     <div class="entry">
3199       <div class="title">
3200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3201       </div>
3202       <div class="date">
3203         24th November 2013
3204       </div>
3205       <div class="body">
3206         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3207 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3208 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3209 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3210 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3211 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3212 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3213 is working on.  I checked the
3214 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3215 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3216 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3217 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3218 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3219 These are the release notes:</p>
3220
3221 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3222
3223 <ul>
3224
3225   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3226    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3227    up.</li>
3228
3229   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3230
3231   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3232    Matthias Klose.</li>
3233
3234   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3235    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3236
3237   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3238    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3239    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3240
3241 </ul>
3242
3243 <p>You can
3244 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3245 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3246 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3247 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3248 include a testsuite check.</p>
3249
3250       </div>
3251       <div class="tags">
3252
3253
3254         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>.
3255
3256
3257       </div>
3258     </div>
3259     <div class="padding"></div>
3260
3261     <div class="entry">
3262       <div class="title">
3263         <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>
3264       </div>
3265       <div class="date">
3266          2nd November 2013
3267       </div>
3268       <div class="body">
3269         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3270 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3271 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3272 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3273 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3274
3275 <p><pre>
3276 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3277 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3278 # Provides:          rsyslog
3279 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3280 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3281 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3282 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3283 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3284 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3285 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3286 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3287 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3288 ### END INIT INFO
3289 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3290 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3291 </pre></p>
3292
3293 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3294 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3295 info/comments.</p>
3296
3297 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3298 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3299
3300 <p><pre>
3301 #!/bin/sh
3302
3303 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3304 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3305 # and status_of_proc is working.
3306 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3307
3308 #
3309 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3310
3311 #
3312 do_start()
3313 {
3314         # Return
3315         #   0 if daemon has been started
3316         #   1 if daemon was already running
3317         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3318         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3319                 || return 1
3320         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3321                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3322                 || return 2
3323         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3324         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3325         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3326 }
3327
3328 #
3329 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3330 #
3331 do_stop()
3332 {
3333         # Return
3334         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3335         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3336         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3337         #   other if a failure occurred
3338         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3339         RETVAL="$?"
3340         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3341         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3342         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3343         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3344         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3345         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3346         # sleep for some time.
3347         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3348         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3349         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3350         rm -f $PIDFILE
3351         return "$RETVAL"
3352 }
3353
3354 #
3355 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3356 #
3357 do_reload() {
3358         #
3359         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3360         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3361         # then implement that here.
3362         #
3363         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3364         return 0
3365 }
3366
3367 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3368 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3369 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3370 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3371     script="$1"
3372     shift
3373     . $script
3374 else
3375     exit 0
3376 fi
3377
3378 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3379 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3380
3381 # Exit if the package is not installed
3382 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3383
3384 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3385 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3386
3387 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3388 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3389
3390 case "$1" in
3391   start)
3392         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3393         do_start
3394         case "$?" in
3395                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3396                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3397         esac
3398         ;;
3399   stop)
3400         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3401         do_stop
3402         case "$?" in
3403                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3404                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3405         esac
3406         ;;
3407   status)
3408         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3409         ;;
3410   #reload|force-reload)
3411         #
3412         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3413         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3414         #
3415         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3416         #do_reload
3417         #log_end_msg $?
3418         #;;
3419   restart|force-reload)
3420         #
3421         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3422         # 'force-reload' alias
3423         #
3424         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3425         do_stop
3426         case "$?" in
3427           0|1)
3428                 do_start
3429                 case "$?" in
3430                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3431                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3432                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3433                 esac
3434                 ;;
3435           *)
3436                 # Failed to stop
3437                 log_end_msg 1
3438                 ;;
3439         esac
3440         ;;
3441   *)
3442         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3443         exit 3
3444         ;;
3445 esac
3446
3447 :
3448 </pre></p>
3449
3450 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3451 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3452 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3453 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3454
3455 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3456 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3457 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3458 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3459 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3460
3461       </div>
3462       <div class="tags">
3463
3464
3465         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>.
3466
3467
3468       </div>
3469     </div>
3470     <div class="padding"></div>
3471
3472     <div class="entry">
3473       <div class="title">
3474         <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>
3475       </div>
3476       <div class="date">
3477          1st November 2013
3478       </div>
3479       <div class="body">
3480         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3481 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3482 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3483 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3484 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3485 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3486 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3487 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3488 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3489 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3490 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3491 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3492
3493 <p>The source is now available from
3494 <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>
3495
3496       </div>
3497       <div class="tags">
3498
3499
3500         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>.
3501
3502
3503       </div>
3504     </div>
3505     <div class="padding"></div>
3506
3507     <div class="entry">
3508       <div class="title">
3509         <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>
3510       </div>
3511       <div class="date">
3512         27th October 2013
3513       </div>
3514       <div class="body">
3515         <p>The
3516 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3517 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3518 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3519 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3520 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3521 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3522 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3523 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3524 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3525 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3526 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3527 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3528
3529 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3530 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3531 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3532 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3533 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3535 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3536 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3537 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3538 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3539 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3540 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3541 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3542 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3543 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3544 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3545 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3546 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3547 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3548 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3549 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3550 available from
3551 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3552 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3553
3554 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3555 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3556 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3557 list:</p>
3558
3559 <p><pre>
3560 #!/bin/sh
3561 set -e # Exit on first error
3562 rootdir="$1"
3563 cd "$rootdir"
3564 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3565 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3566 EOF
3567 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3568 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3569 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3570     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3571 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3572 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3573 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3574 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3575 </pre></p>
3576
3577 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3578 to build the image:</p>
3579
3580 <pre>
3581 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3582     --variant minbase \
3583     --arch armel \
3584     --distribution jessie \
3585     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3586     --image test.img \
3587     --size 600M \
3588     --bootsize 64M \
3589     --boottype vfat \
3590     --log-level debug \
3591     --verbose \
3592     --no-kernel \
3593     --no-extlinux \
3594     --root-password raspberry \
3595     --hostname raspberrypi \
3596     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3597     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3598     --package netbase \
3599     --package git-core \
3600     --package binutils \
3601     --package ca-certificates \
3602     --package wget \
3603     --package kmod
3604 </pre></p>
3605
3606 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3607 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3608 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3609 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3610 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3611 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3612 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3613
3614 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3615 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3616 build dependency list.</p>
3617
3618 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3619 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3620 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3621 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3622
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="tags">
3625
3626
3627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
3628
3629
3630       </div>
3631     </div>
3632     <div class="padding"></div>
3633
3634     <div class="entry">
3635       <div class="title">
3636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="date">
3639         15th October 2013
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="body">
3642         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3643 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3644 these. :)</p>
3645
3646 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3647 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3648 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3649 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3650 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3651 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3652 hope you will to. :)</p>
3653
3654 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3655 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3656 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3657 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3658 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3659
3660 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3661 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3662 statement under the heading
3663 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3664 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3665 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3666 too.</p>
3667
3668       </div>
3669       <div class="tags">
3670
3671
3672         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>.
3673
3674
3675       </div>
3676     </div>
3677     <div class="padding"></div>
3678
3679     <div class="entry">
3680       <div class="title">
3681         <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>
3682       </div>
3683       <div class="date">
3684         27th September 2013
3685       </div>
3686       <div class="body">
3687         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3688 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3689 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3690 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3691
3692 <ul>
3693
3694 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3695 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3696
3697 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3698 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3699
3700 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3701 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3702 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3703 (Youtube)</li>
3704
3705 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3706 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3707
3708 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3709 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3710
3711 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3712 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3713 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3714
3715 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3716 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3717 (Youtube)</li>
3718
3719 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3720 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3721
3722 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3723 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3724
3725 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3726 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3727 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3728
3729 </ul>
3730
3731 <p>A larger list is available from
3732 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3733 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3734
3735 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3736 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3737 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3738 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3739 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3740 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3741 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3742 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3743 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3744 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3745 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3746
3747       </div>
3748       <div class="tags">
3749
3750
3751         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>.
3752
3753
3754       </div>
3755     </div>
3756     <div class="padding"></div>
3757
3758     <div class="entry">
3759       <div class="title">
3760         <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>
3761       </div>
3762       <div class="date">
3763         10th September 2013
3764       </div>
3765       <div class="body">
3766         <p>I was introduced to the
3767 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3768 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3769 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3770 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3771 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3772 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3773 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3774 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3775
3776 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3777 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3778 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3779 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3780 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3781
3782 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3783 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3784 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3785 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3786 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3787 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3788 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3789 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3790 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3791 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3792 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3793 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3794 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3795 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3796 missing in Debian).</p>
3797
3798 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3799 scripts
3800 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3801 and a administrative web interface
3802 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3803 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3804 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3805 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3806 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3807 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3808 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3809 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3810 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3811 this is really working yet, see
3812 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3813 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3814 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3815 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3816 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3817 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3818 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3819
3820 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3821 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3822 at.</p>
3823
3824 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3825
3826 <ol>
3827
3828 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3829 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3830 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3831 to the Debian installer:<p>
3832 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3833
3834 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3835 install on.</li>
3836
3837 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3838 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3839
3840 </ol>
3841
3842 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3843
3844 <ol>
3845
3846 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3847 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3848 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3849 <pre>
3850 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3851 </pre></li>
3852 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3853 <pre>
3854 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3855    apt-key add -
3856 apt-get update
3857 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3858 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3859 </pre></li>
3860 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3861
3862 </ol>
3863
3864 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3865 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3866 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3867 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3868 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3869
3870 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3871 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3872 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3873 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3874
3875 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3876 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3877 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3878 irc.debian.org and the
3879 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3880 mailing list</a>.</p>
3881
3882 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3883 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3884 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3885 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3886 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3887 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3888
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="tags">
3891
3892
3893         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>.
3894
3895
3896       </div>
3897     </div>
3898     <div class="padding"></div>
3899
3900     <div class="entry">
3901       <div class="title">
3902         <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>
3903       </div>
3904       <div class="date">
3905         18th August 2013
3906       </div>
3907       <div class="body">
3908         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3909 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3910 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3911 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3912 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3913 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3914 currently on the disk.</p>
3915
3916 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3917 <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>
3918 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3919 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3920 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3921 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3922 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3923 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3924 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3925 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3926 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3927 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3928 the broken disks.</p>
3929
3930       </div>
3931       <div class="tags">
3932
3933
3934         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>.
3935
3936
3937       </div>
3938     </div>
3939     <div class="padding"></div>
3940
3941     <div class="entry">
3942       <div class="title">
3943         <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>
3944       </div>
3945       <div class="date">
3946         17th July 2013
3947       </div>
3948       <div class="body">
3949         <p>Today I switched to
3950 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3951 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3952 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3953 <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
3954 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3955 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3956 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3957 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3958 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3959 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3960 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3961 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3962 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3963 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3964 station from now on.</p>
3965
3966 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3967 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3968 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3969 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3970 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3971 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3972 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3973 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3974 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3975 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3976 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3977 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3978
3979 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3980 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3981 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3982 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3983 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3984 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3985 parameters are tuned:</p>
3986
3987 <ul>
3988
3989 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3990     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3991
3992 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3993     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3994     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3995
3996 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3997     systems.</li>
3998
3999 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
4000     /etc/fstab.</li>
4001
4002 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
4003
4004 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
4005     cron.daily).</li>
4006
4007 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
4008     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
4009
4010 </ul>
4011
4012 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
4013 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
4014 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
4015 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
4016 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
4017 from getting the data on the disk (see
4018 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
4019 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
4020 right thing to do.</p>
4021
4022 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
4023 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
4024 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
4025
4026 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
4027 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
4028 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
4029 instead of during my work.</p>
4030
4031 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
4032 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
4033
4034 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
4035 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
4036 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
4037
4038 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
4039 there.</p>
4040
4041 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
4042 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
4043 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
4044 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
4045 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
4046 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
4047 back.</p>
4048
4049       </div>
4050       <div class="tags">
4051
4052
4053         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>.
4054
4055
4056       </div>
4057     </div>
4058     <div class="padding"></div>
4059
4060     <div class="entry">
4061       <div class="title">
4062         <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>
4063       </div>
4064       <div class="date">
4065         10th July 2013
4066       </div>
4067       <div class="body">
4068         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
4069 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
4070 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
4071 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
4072 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
4073 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
4074 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
4075 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
4076
4077 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
4078 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
4079 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
4080 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
4081 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
4082 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
4083 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
4084 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
4085 lock up when I download a new
4086 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
4087 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
4088 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
4089
4090 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4091 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
4092 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4093 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
4094 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4095 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4096
4097 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
4098 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
4099 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
4100 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
4101 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
4102 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
4103
4104 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
4105 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
4106 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
4107 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
4108 exist).</p>
4109
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="tags">
4112
4113
4114         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>.
4115
4116
4117       </div>
4118     </div>
4119     <div class="padding"></div>
4120
4121     <div class="entry">
4122       <div class="title">
4123         <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>
4124       </div>
4125       <div class="date">
4126          9th July 2013
4127       </div>
4128       <div class="body">
4129         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4130 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4131 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4132 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4133 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4134 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4135 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4136
4137 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4138 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4139 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4140 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4141 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4142
4143       </div>
4144       <div class="tags">
4145
4146
4147         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>.
4148
4149
4150       </div>
4151     </div>
4152     <div class="padding"></div>
4153
4154     <div class="entry">
4155       <div class="title">
4156         <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>
4157       </div>
4158       <div class="date">
4159          5th July 2013
4160       </div>
4161       <div class="body">
4162         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4163 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4164 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4165 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4166 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4167 ended up picking a
4168 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4169 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4170 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4171 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4172 on that below.</p>
4173
4174 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4175 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4176 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4177 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4178 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4179 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4180 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4181 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4182 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4183
4184 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4185 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4186 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4187 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4188 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4189 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4190 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4191
4192 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4193 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4194
4195 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4196 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4197 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4198 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4199 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4200 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4201 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4202 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4203 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4204 kernel developers as
4205 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4206 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4207 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4208 Lenovo forums, both for
4209 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4210 2012-11-10</a> and for
4211 <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
4212 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4213 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4214 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4215 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4216 There is even a
4217 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4218 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4219 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4220
4221 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4222 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4223 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4224 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4225 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4226 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4227 fixed. :)</p>
4228
4229       </div>
4230       <div class="tags">
4231
4232
4233         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>.
4234
4235
4236       </div>
4237     </div>
4238     <div class="padding"></div>
4239
4240     <div class="entry">
4241       <div class="title">
4242         <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>
4243       </div>
4244       <div class="date">
4245          4th July 2013
4246       </div>
4247       <div class="body">
4248         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4249 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4250 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4251 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4252 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4253 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4254 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4255 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4256 with an expencive door stop.</p>
4257
4258 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4259 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4260 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4261 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4262 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4263 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4264 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
4265
4266 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4267 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4268 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4269 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4270 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4271 new laptop now. :)</p>
4272
4273 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
4274
4275       </div>
4276       <div class="tags">
4277
4278
4279         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>.
4280
4281
4282       </div>
4283     </div>
4284     <div class="padding"></div>
4285
4286     <div class="entry">
4287       <div class="title">
4288         <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>
4289       </div>
4290       <div class="date">
4291         25th June 2013
4292       </div>
4293       <div class="body">
4294         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4295 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4296 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4297 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4298 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4299 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4300 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4301 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4302 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4303 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4304 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4305
4306 <p><pre>
4307 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4308 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4309 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4310 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4311 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4312 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4313 firmware-ipw2x00
4314 firmware-ipw2x00
4315 Preconfiguring packages ...
4316 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4317 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4318 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4319 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4320 #
4321 </pre></p>
4322
4323 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4324 printed instead:</p>
4325
4326 <p><pre>
4327 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4328 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4329 #
4330 </pre></p>
4331
4332 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4333 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4334
4335 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4336 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4337 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4338 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4339 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4340 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4341 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4342 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4343 machine.</p>
4344
4345 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4346 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4347 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4348 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4349 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4350 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4351
4352       </div>
4353       <div class="tags">
4354
4355
4356         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>.
4357
4358
4359       </div>
4360     </div>
4361     <div class="padding"></div>
4362
4363     <div class="entry">
4364       <div class="title">
4365         <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>
4366       </div>
4367       <div class="date">
4368         11th June 2013
4369       </div>
4370       <div class="body">
4371         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4372 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4373 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4374 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4375 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4376 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4377 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4378 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4379 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4380 i915 driver used by the
4381 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4382 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4383
4384 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4385 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4386 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4387 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4388 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4389
4390 <pre>
4391 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4392 update-initramfs -u -k all
4393 </pre>
4394
4395 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4396 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4397 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4398 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4399 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4400 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4401 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4402 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4403 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4404 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4405 number.</p>
4406
4407 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4408 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4409
4410 <p><pre>
4411 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4412     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4413     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4414  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4415  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4416     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4417  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4418     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4419  Latency: 0
4420  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4421  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4422  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4423  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4424  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4425  Capabilities: <access denied>
4426  Kernel driver in use: i915
4427 </pre></p>
4428
4429 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4430
4431 <p><pre>
4432 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4433        ...
4434         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4435         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4436        ...
4437 }
4438 </pre></p>
4439
4440 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4441 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4442 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4443 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4444 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4445 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4446 yet shown up in
4447 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4448 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4449 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4450 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4451 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4452 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4453
4454 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4455 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4456 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4457 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4458 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4459 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4460 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4461 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4462 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4463 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4464 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4465 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4466
4467 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4468 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4469 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4470 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4471 backlight.</p>
4472
4473       </div>
4474       <div class="tags">
4475
4476
4477         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>.
4478
4479
4480       </div>
4481     </div>
4482     <div class="padding"></div>
4483
4484     <div class="entry">
4485       <div class="title">
4486         <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>
4487       </div>
4488       <div class="date">
4489         27th May 2013
4490       </div>
4491       <div class="body">
4492         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4493 <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
4494 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4495 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4496 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4497 and Windows 8.</p>
4498
4499 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4500 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4501 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4502 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4503 enough to tell.</p>
4504
4505 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4506 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4507 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4508 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4509 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4510 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4511 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4512 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4513 to follow.</p>
4514
4515 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4516 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4517 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4518 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4519 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4520 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4521 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4522 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4523
4524 <p>I've updated the
4525 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4526 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4527 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4528 machine.</p>
4529
4530 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4531 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4532
4533       </div>
4534       <div class="tags">
4535
4536
4537         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>.
4538
4539
4540       </div>
4541     </div>
4542     <div class="padding"></div>
4543
4544     <div class="entry">
4545       <div class="title">
4546         <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>
4547       </div>
4548       <div class="date">
4549         25th May 2013
4550       </div>
4551       <div class="body">
4552         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4553 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4554 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4555 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4556 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4557 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4558
4559 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4560 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4561 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4562 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4563 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4564 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4565 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4566 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4567 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4568 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4569
4570 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4571 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4572 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4573 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4574 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4575 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4576
4577 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4578 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4579 on new Laptops?</p>
4580
4581       </div>
4582       <div class="tags">
4583
4584
4585         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>.
4586
4587
4588       </div>
4589     </div>
4590     <div class="padding"></div>
4591
4592     <div class="entry">
4593       <div class="title">
4594         <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>
4595       </div>
4596       <div class="date">
4597         17th May 2013
4598       </div>
4599       <div class="body">
4600         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4601 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4602 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4603 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4604 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4605 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4606 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4607 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4608 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4609 donate some money</a>.
4610
4611 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4612 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4613 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4614 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4615 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4616
4617 <p>The script,
4618 <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/>
4619 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4620 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4621 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4622
4623 <ol>
4624
4625 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4626 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4627 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4628     our configuration.</li>
4629 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4630     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4631     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4632     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4633 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4634     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4635 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4636
4637 </ol>
4638
4639 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4640 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4641 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4642 the needed packages.</p>
4643
4644 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4645 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4646 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4647 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4648 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4649 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4650
4651 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4652 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4653 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4654
4655 <p><pre>
4656 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4657 DESKTOP="lxde"
4658 </pre></p>
4659
4660 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4661 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4662 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4663 boot.</p>
4664
4665       </div>
4666       <div class="tags">
4667
4668
4669         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>.
4670
4671
4672       </div>
4673     </div>
4674     <div class="padding"></div>
4675
4676     <div class="entry">
4677       <div class="title">
4678         <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>
4679       </div>
4680       <div class="date">
4681         11th May 2013
4682       </div>
4683       <div class="body">
4684         <P>In January,
4685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4686 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4687 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4688 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4689 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4690 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4691 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4692 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4693 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4694 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4695 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4696 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4697
4698 <p><table>
4699 <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>
4700 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4701 <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>
4702 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4703 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4704 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4705 <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>
4706 <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>
4707 <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>
4708 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4709 </table></p>
4710
4711 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4712 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4713 available in experimental.</p>
4714
4715 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4716 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4717 for LEGO designers.</p>
4718
4719       </div>
4720       <div class="tags">
4721
4722
4723         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>.
4724
4725
4726       </div>
4727     </div>
4728     <div class="padding"></div>
4729
4730     <div class="entry">
4731       <div class="title">
4732         <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>
4733       </div>
4734       <div class="date">
4735          5th May 2013
4736       </div>
4737       <div class="body">
4738         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4739 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4740 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4741 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4742 soon.</p>
4743
4744 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4745 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4746 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4747 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4748 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4749 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4750 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4751 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4752 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4753 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4754 Edu.</a>
4755
4756 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4757 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4758 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4759 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4760 follow.<p>
4761
4762       </div>
4763       <div class="tags">
4764
4765
4766         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>.
4767
4768
4769       </div>
4770     </div>
4771     <div class="padding"></div>
4772
4773     <div class="entry">
4774       <div class="title">
4775         <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>
4776       </div>
4777       <div class="date">
4778          3rd April 2013
4779       </div>
4780       <div class="body">
4781         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4782 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4783 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4784 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4785
4786 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4787 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4788 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4789 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4790 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4791 BTS. :)</p>
4792
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="tags">
4795
4796
4797         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>.
4798
4799
4800       </div>
4801     </div>
4802     <div class="padding"></div>
4803
4804     <div class="entry">
4805       <div class="title">
4806         <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>
4807       </div>
4808       <div class="date">
4809          2nd February 2013
4810       </div>
4811       <div class="body">
4812         <p>My
4813 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4814 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4815 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4816 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4817 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4818 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4819 version too.</p>
4820
4821 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4822 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4823 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4824 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4825 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4826 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4827 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4828 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4829
4830 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4831 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4832 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4833 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4834 it. :)</p>
4835
4836 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4837 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4838 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4839
4840       </div>
4841       <div class="tags">
4842
4843
4844         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>.
4845
4846
4847       </div>
4848     </div>
4849     <div class="padding"></div>
4850
4851     <div class="entry">
4852       <div class="title">
4853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4854       </div>
4855       <div class="date">
4856         22nd January 2013
4857       </div>
4858       <div class="body">
4859         <p>Yesterday, I
4860 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4861 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4862 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4863 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4864 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4865 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4866 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4867 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4868 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4869 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4870 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4871 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4872 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4873
4874 <pre>
4875 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4876 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4877 </pre>
4878
4879 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4880 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4881 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4882 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4883
4884 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4885 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4886 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4887 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4888 word.</p>
4889
4890 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4891 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4892 process.</p>
4893
4894 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4895 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4896
4897       </div>
4898       <div class="tags">
4899
4900
4901         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>.
4902
4903
4904       </div>
4905     </div>
4906     <div class="padding"></div>
4907
4908     <div class="entry">
4909       <div class="title">
4910         <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>
4911       </div>
4912       <div class="date">
4913         21st January 2013
4914       </div>
4915       <div class="body">
4916         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4918 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4919 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4920 it, fetch the
4921 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4922 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4923 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4924 autostart script.</p>
4925
4926 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4927
4928 <ul>
4929
4930 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4931 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4932
4933 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4934 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4935 initially did.</li>
4936
4937 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4938 the APT database, a database
4939 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4940 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4941
4942 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4943 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4944 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4945 package or packages.</li>
4946
4947 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4948 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4949
4950 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4951 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4952
4953 </ul>
4954
4955 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4956 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4957 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4958 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4959
4960 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4961 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4962 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4963 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4964 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4965
4966 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4967 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4968 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4969 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4970 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4971 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4972 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4973 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4974
4975 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4976 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4977 '<tt>svn checkout
4978 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4979 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4980 devscripts package.</p>
4981
4982 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4983 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4984 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4985 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4986 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4987
4988       </div>
4989       <div class="tags">
4990
4991
4992         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>.
4993
4994
4995       </div>
4996     </div>
4997     <div class="padding"></div>
4998
4999     <div class="entry">
5000       <div class="title">
5001         <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>
5002       </div>
5003       <div class="date">
5004         19th January 2013
5005       </div>
5006       <div class="body">
5007         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
5008 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
5009 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
5010 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
5011 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
5012 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
5013 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
5014 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
5015 not a durable solution.
5016
5017 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
5018 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
5019
5020 <ul>
5021
5022 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
5023   than A4).</li>
5024 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
5025 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
5026 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
5027 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
5028 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
5029 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
5030 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
5031 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
5032 size).</li>
5033 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
5034   X.org packages.</li>
5035 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
5036   the time).
5037
5038 </ul>
5039
5040 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
5041 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
5042 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
5043 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
5044 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
5045 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
5046 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
5047 still be useful.</p>
5048
5049 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
5050 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
5051 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
5052 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
5053 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
5054 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
5055
5056       </div>
5057       <div class="tags">
5058
5059
5060         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>.
5061
5062
5063       </div>
5064     </div>
5065     <div class="padding"></div>
5066
5067     <div class="entry">
5068       <div class="title">
5069         <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>
5070       </div>
5071       <div class="date">
5072         18th January 2013
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="body">
5075         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
5076 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
5077 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
5078 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
5079 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
5080 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
5081 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
5082
5083 <pre>
5084 #!/usr/bin/python
5085 import sys
5086 import apt
5087 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5088     cache = apt.Cache()
5089     cache.open(None)
5090     thepkgs = []
5091     for pkg in cache:
5092         version = pkg.candidate
5093         if version is None:
5094             version = pkg.installed
5095         if version is None:
5096             continue
5097         record = version.record
5098         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
5099             continue
5100         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
5101         for t in mime_types:
5102             t = t.rstrip().strip()
5103             if t == mimetype:
5104                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
5105     return thepkgs
5106 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
5107 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
5108     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
5109 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
5110 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
5111     print "  %s" %pkg
5112 </pre>
5113
5114 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
5115
5116 <pre>
5117 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
5118 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
5119   gecko-mediaplayer
5120 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
5121 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
5122   browser-plugin-gnash
5123 %
5124 </pre>
5125
5126 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5127 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5128 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5129 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5130
5131 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5132 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5133 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5134 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5135 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5136 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
5137
5138       </div>
5139       <div class="tags">
5140
5141
5142         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>.
5143
5144
5145       </div>
5146     </div>
5147     <div class="padding"></div>
5148
5149     <div class="entry">
5150       <div class="title">
5151         <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>
5152       </div>
5153       <div class="date">
5154         16th January 2013
5155       </div>
5156       <div class="body">
5157         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5158 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5159 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5160 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5161 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5162 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5163 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5164 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5165
5166 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5167 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5168 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5169 can be found on the
5170 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5171 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5172 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5173 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5174 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5175
5176 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5177
5178 <pre>
5179   count MIME type
5180   ----- -----------------------
5181      32 text/plain
5182      30 audio/mpeg
5183      29 image/png
5184      28 image/jpeg
5185      27 application/ogg
5186      26 audio/x-mp3
5187      25 image/tiff
5188      25 image/gif
5189      22 image/bmp
5190      22 audio/x-wav
5191      20 audio/x-flac
5192      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5193      18 video/x-ms-asf
5194      18 audio/x-musepack
5195      18 audio/x-mpeg
5196      18 application/x-ogg
5197      17 video/mpeg
5198      17 audio/x-scpls
5199      17 audio/ogg
5200      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5201 </pre>
5202
5203 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5204
5205 <pre>
5206   count MIME type
5207   ----- -----------------------
5208      33 text/plain
5209      32 image/png
5210      32 image/jpeg
5211      29 audio/mpeg
5212      27 image/gif
5213      26 image/tiff
5214      26 application/ogg
5215      25 audio/x-mp3
5216      22 image/bmp
5217      21 audio/x-wav
5218      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5219      19 audio/x-mpeg
5220      18 video/mpeg
5221      18 audio/x-scpls
5222      18 audio/x-flac
5223      18 application/x-ogg
5224      17 video/x-ms-asf
5225      17 text/html
5226      17 audio/x-musepack
5227      16 image/x-xbitmap
5228 </pre>
5229
5230 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5231
5232 <pre>
5233   count MIME type
5234   ----- -----------------------
5235      31 text/plain
5236      31 image/png
5237      31 image/jpeg
5238      29 audio/mpeg
5239      28 application/ogg
5240      27 image/gif
5241      26 image/tiff
5242      26 audio/x-mp3
5243      23 audio/x-wav
5244      22 image/bmp
5245      21 audio/x-flac
5246      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5247      19 audio/x-mpeg
5248      18 video/x-ms-asf
5249      18 video/mpeg
5250      18 audio/x-scpls
5251      18 application/x-ogg
5252      17 audio/x-musepack
5253      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5254      16 video/x-msvideo
5255 </pre>
5256
5257 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5258 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5259 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5260 issues.</p>
5261
5262 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5263 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5264
5265       </div>
5266       <div class="tags">
5267
5268
5269         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>.
5270
5271
5272       </div>
5273     </div>
5274     <div class="padding"></div>
5275
5276     <div class="entry">
5277       <div class="title">
5278         <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>
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="date">
5281         15th January 2013
5282       </div>
5283       <div class="body">
5284         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5286 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5288 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5289 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5290 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5291 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5292 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5293 packages.</p>
5294
5295 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5296 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5297 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5298 modalias.</p>
5299
5300 <p><blockquote>
5301 Package: package-name
5302 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5303 </blockquote></p>
5304
5305 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5306 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5307
5308 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5309 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5310
5311 <p><blockquote>
5312 Package: cheese
5313 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5314 </blockquote></p>
5315
5316 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5317 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5318
5319 <p><blockquote>
5320 Package: pcmciautils
5321 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5322 </blockquote></p>
5323
5324 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5325 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5326
5327 <p><blockquote>
5328 Package: colorhug-client
5329 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5330 </blockquote></p>
5331
5332 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5333 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5334 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5335
5336 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5337 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5338 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5339 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5340 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5341 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5342 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5343 Raring.</p>
5344
5345 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5346 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5347 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5348 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5349 try the
5350 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5351 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5352 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5353 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5354
5355 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5356 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5357
5358 <p><blockquote>
5359 % ./hw-support-lookup
5360 <br>yubikey-personalization
5361 <br>%
5362 </blockquote></p>
5363
5364 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5365 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5366
5367 <p><blockquote>
5368 % ./hw-support-lookup
5369 <br>pcmciautils
5370 <br>%
5371 </blockquote></p>
5372
5373 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5374 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5375 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5376
5377 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5378 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5379 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5380 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5381 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5382 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5383 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5384 see if it work.</p>
5385
5386 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5387 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5388 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5389 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5390
5391       </div>
5392       <div class="tags">
5393
5394
5395         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>.
5396
5397
5398       </div>
5399     </div>
5400     <div class="padding"></div>
5401
5402     <div class="entry">
5403       <div class="title">
5404         <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>
5405       </div>
5406       <div class="date">
5407         14th January 2013
5408       </div>
5409       <div class="body">
5410         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5411 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5412 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5413 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5414 in
5415 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5416 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5417
5418 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5419
5420 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5421 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5422 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5423 &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;,
5424 &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
5425 &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;.
5426
5427 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5428 this shell script:</p>
5429
5430 <pre>
5431 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5432 </pre>
5433
5434 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5435 using modinfo:</p>
5436
5437 <pre>
5438 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5439 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5440 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5441 %
5442 </pre>
5443
5444 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5445
5446 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5447 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5448
5449 <p><blockquote>
5450 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5451 </blockquote></p>
5452
5453 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5454
5455 <pre>
5456  v   00008086  (vendor)
5457  d   00002770  (device)
5458  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5459  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5460  bc  06        (bus class)
5461  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5462  i   00        (interface)
5463 </pre>
5464
5465 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5466 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5467 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5468 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5469
5470 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5471 means.</p>
5472
5473 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5474
5475 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5476 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5477
5478 <p><blockquote>
5479 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5480 </blockquote></p>
5481
5482 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5483
5484 <pre>
5485  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5486  p    0001  (device product)
5487  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5488  dc     09  (device class)
5489  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5490  dp     00  (device protocol)
5491  ic     09  (interface class)
5492  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5493  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5494 </pre>
5495
5496 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5497 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5498 these alias entries show up:</p>
5499
5500 <p><blockquote>
5501 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5502 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5503 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5504 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5505 </blockquote></p>
5506
5507 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5508 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5509 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5510
5511 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5512
5513 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5514 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5515
5516 <p><blockquote>
5517 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5518 </blockquote></p>
5519
5520 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5521
5522 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5523
5524 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5525 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5526 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5527
5528 <p><blockquote>
5529 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5530 </blockquote></p>
5531
5532 <p>The values present are</p>
5533
5534 <pre>
5535  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5536  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5537  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5538  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5539  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5540  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5541  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5542  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5543  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5544  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5545  ct   10             (chassis type)
5546  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5547 </pre>
5548
5549 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5550 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5551
5552 <pre>
5553   3 Desktop
5554   4 Low Profile Desktop
5555   5 Pizza Box
5556   6 Mini Tower
5557   7 Tower
5558   8 Portable
5559   9 Laptop
5560  10 Notebook
5561  11 Hand Held
5562  12 Docking Station
5563  13 All In One
5564  14 Sub Notebook
5565  15 Space-saving
5566  16 Lunch Box
5567  17 Main Server Chassis
5568  18 Expansion Chassis
5569  19 Sub Chassis
5570  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5571  21 Peripheral Chassis
5572  22 RAID Chassis
5573  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5574  24 Sealed-case PC
5575  25 Multi-system
5576  26 CompactPCI
5577  27 AdvancedTCA
5578  28 Blade
5579  29 Blade Enclosing
5580 </pre>
5581
5582 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5583 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5584 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5585
5586 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5587
5588 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5589 test machine:</p>
5590
5591 <p><blockquote>
5592 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5593 </blockquote></p>
5594
5595 <p>The values present are</p>
5596
5597 <pre>
5598   ty  01  (type)
5599   pr  00  (prototype)
5600   id  00  (id)
5601   ex  00  (extra)
5602 </pre>
5603
5604 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5605 the valid values are.</p>
5606
5607 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5608
5609 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5610 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5611 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5612 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5613 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5614 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5615 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5616
5617 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5618
5619 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5620 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5621
5622 <pre>
5623   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5624     echo "$id" ; \
5625     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5626   done
5627 </pre>
5628
5629 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5630 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5631
5632 <pre>
5633   acpi:ACPI0003:
5634     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5635   acpi:device:
5636   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5637   acpi:IBM0068:
5638     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5639     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5640     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5641     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5642   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5643     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5644     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5645     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5646   [...]
5647 </pre>
5648
5649 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5650 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5651 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5652 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5653
5654 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5655 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5656 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5657
5658       </div>
5659       <div class="tags">
5660
5661
5662         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>.
5663
5664
5665       </div>
5666     </div>
5667     <div class="padding"></div>
5668
5669     <div class="entry">
5670       <div class="title">
5671         <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>
5672       </div>
5673       <div class="date">
5674         10th January 2013
5675       </div>
5676       <div class="body">
5677         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5678 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5679 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5681 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5682 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5683 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5684 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5685 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5686 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5687 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5688 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5689 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5690 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5691 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5692 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5693 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5694 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5695
5696       </div>
5697       <div class="tags">
5698
5699
5700         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>.
5701
5702
5703       </div>
5704     </div>
5705     <div class="padding"></div>
5706
5707     <div class="entry">
5708       <div class="title">
5709         <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>
5710       </div>
5711       <div class="date">
5712          9th January 2013
5713       </div>
5714       <div class="body">
5715         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5716 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5717 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5718 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5719 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5720 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5721 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5722 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5723 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5724 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5725 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5726
5727 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5728 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5729 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5730 simple:
5731
5732 <ul>
5733
5734 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5735   starting when a user log in.</li>
5736
5737 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5738   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5739
5740 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5741   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5742   packages.</li>
5743
5744 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5745   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5746
5747 </ul>
5748
5749 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5750 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5751 discover database to find packages and
5752 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5753 packages.</p>
5754
5755 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5756 draft package is now checked into
5757 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5758 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5759 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5760 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5761 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5762 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5763 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5764 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5765 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5766 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5767 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5768 because of the freeze).</p>
5769
5770 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5771 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5772 inserted):</p>
5773
5774 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5775
5776 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5777 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5778 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5779
5780 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5781 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5782 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5783 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5784 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5785 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5786 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5787
5788 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5789 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5790 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5791 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5792 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5793 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5794 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5795 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5796 not be installed?</p>
5797
5798 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5799 please send me an email. :)</p>
5800
5801       </div>
5802       <div class="tags">
5803
5804
5805         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>.
5806
5807
5808       </div>
5809     </div>
5810     <div class="padding"></div>
5811
5812     <div class="entry">
5813       <div class="title">
5814         <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>
5815       </div>
5816       <div class="date">
5817          2nd January 2013
5818       </div>
5819       <div class="body">
5820         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5821 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5822 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5823 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5824 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5825 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5826 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5827 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5828 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5829 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5830
5831 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5832 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5833 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5834
5835       </div>
5836       <div class="tags">
5837
5838
5839         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>.
5840
5841
5842       </div>
5843     </div>
5844     <div class="padding"></div>
5845
5846     <div class="entry">
5847       <div class="title">
5848         <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>
5849       </div>
5850       <div class="date">
5851         25th December 2012
5852       </div>
5853       <div class="body">
5854         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5855 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5856
5857 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5858 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5859 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5860 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5861 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5862 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5863 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5864 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5865 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5866 name.</p>
5867
5868 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5869 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5870 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5871
5872 <blockquote><pre>
5873 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5874 cd bitcoin
5875 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5876 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5877 </pre></blockquote>
5878
5879 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5880 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5881 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5882 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5883 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5884 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5885 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5886 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5887 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5888
5889 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5890 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5891 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5892
5893       </div>
5894       <div class="tags">
5895
5896
5897         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>.
5898
5899
5900       </div>
5901     </div>
5902     <div class="padding"></div>
5903
5904     <div class="entry">
5905       <div class="title">
5906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5907       </div>
5908       <div class="date">
5909         21st December 2012
5910       </div>
5911       <div class="body">
5912         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5913 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5914 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5915 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5916 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5917 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5918 is now maintained by a
5919 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5920 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5921 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5922 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5923 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5924 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5925 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5926 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5927 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5928 Corallo in a
5929 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5930 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5931 Debian package.</p>
5932
5933 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5934 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5935 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5936 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5937 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5938 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5939 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5940 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5941 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5942 new version to unstable.
5943
5944 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5945 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5946 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5947 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5948 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5949 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5950 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5951 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5952 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5953 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5954 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5955 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5956 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5957 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5958 have not tested them.</p>
5959
5960 <p>My
5961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5962 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5963 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5964 years ago, as can be
5965 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5966 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5967 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5968 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5969 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5970 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5971 the same address as last time,
5972 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5973
5974       </div>
5975       <div class="tags">
5976
5977
5978         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>.
5979
5980
5981       </div>
5982     </div>
5983     <div class="padding"></div>
5984
5985     <div class="entry">
5986       <div class="title">
5987         <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>
5988       </div>
5989       <div class="date">
5990          7th September 2012
5991       </div>
5992       <div class="body">
5993         <p>As I
5994 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5995 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5996 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5997 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5998 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5999
6000 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6001 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6002 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6003 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
6004
6005 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6006 PostScript formats at
6007 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6008 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
6009
6010       </div>
6011       <div class="tags">
6012
6013
6014         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>.
6015
6016
6017       </div>
6018     </div>
6019     <div class="padding"></div>
6020
6021     <div class="entry">
6022       <div class="title">
6023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
6024       </div>
6025       <div class="date">
6026         16th August 2012
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="body">
6029         <p>I dag fyller
6030 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
6031 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
6032 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
6033
6034       </div>
6035       <div class="tags">
6036
6037
6038         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
6039
6040
6041       </div>
6042     </div>
6043     <div class="padding"></div>
6044
6045     <div class="entry">
6046       <div class="title">
6047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
6048       </div>
6049       <div class="date">
6050         24th June 2012
6051       </div>
6052       <div class="body">
6053         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
6054 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
6055 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
6056 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
6057 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
6058 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
6059 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
6060 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
6061 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
6062 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
6063 missing in my book.</p>
6064
6065 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
6066 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
6067 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
6068 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
6069 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
6070 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
6071 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
6072
6073       </div>
6074       <div class="tags">
6075
6076
6077         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>.
6078
6079
6080       </div>
6081     </div>
6082     <div class="padding"></div>
6083
6084     <div class="entry">
6085       <div class="title">
6086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
6087       </div>
6088       <div class="date">
6089         21st November 2011
6090       </div>
6091       <div class="body">
6092         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
6093 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
6094 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6095 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
6096 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6097 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6098 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6099 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6100 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6101 the tools to do so.</p>
6102
6103 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6104 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
6105 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6106 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
6107
6108 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6109 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
6110 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
6111 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6112 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6113 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6114 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6115 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
6116
6117 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6118 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6119 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
6120
6121 <p><pre>
6122 #!/usr/bin/perl
6123 use strict;
6124 use warnings;
6125 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6126 BEGIN {
6127     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6128     my %rhelmodules = (
6129         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
6130         );
6131     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6132         eval "use $module;";
6133         if ($@) {
6134             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6135             system("yum install -y $pkg");
6136             eval "use $module;";
6137         }
6138     }
6139 }
6140 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6141
6142 upgrade_dell();
6143
6144 exit 0;
6145
6146 sub run_firmware_script {
6147     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6148     unless ($script) {
6149         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6150         exit 1
6151     }
6152     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6153
6154     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6155         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6156     } else {
6157         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6158     }
6159 }
6160
6161 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6162     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6163     # Run firmware packages
6164     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6165         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6166         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6167         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6168             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6169             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6170         }
6171         closedir $dh;
6172     }
6173 }
6174
6175 sub download {
6176     my $url = shift;
6177     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6178     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6179 }
6180
6181 sub upgrade_dell {
6182     my @dirs;
6183     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6184     chomp $product;
6185
6186     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6187
6188         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6189         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6190
6191         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6192             CLEANUP => 1
6193             );
6194         chdir($tmpdir);
6195         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6196         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6197         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6198         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6199         my $fwopts = "-q";
6200         if (@paths) {
6201             for my $url (@paths) {
6202                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6203             }
6204             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6205         } else {
6206             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6207             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6208         }
6209         chdir('/');
6210     } else {
6211         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6212         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6213     }
6214 }
6215
6216 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6217     my $path = shift;
6218     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6219     download($url);
6220 }
6221
6222 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6223 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6224 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6225 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6226     my $filename = shift;
6227
6228     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6229     chomp $product;
6230     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6231
6232     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6233
6234     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6235     my @paths;
6236     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6237         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
6238         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
6239         my $oscode;
6240         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
6241             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
6242         } else {
6243             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
6244         }
6245         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6246         {
6247             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
6248         }
6249     }
6250     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6251         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
6252
6253         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6254         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6255
6256         my $cpath = $component->{path};
6257         for my $path (@paths) {
6258             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6259                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6260             }
6261         }
6262     }
6263     return @paths;
6264 }
6265 </pre>
6266
6267 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6268 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6269 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6270 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6271 outdated.</p>
6272
6273       </div>
6274       <div class="tags">
6275
6276
6277         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>.
6278
6279
6280       </div>
6281     </div>
6282     <div class="padding"></div>
6283
6284     <div class="entry">
6285       <div class="title">
6286         <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>
6287       </div>
6288       <div class="date">
6289          4th August 2011
6290       </div>
6291       <div class="body">
6292         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6293 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6294 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6295 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6296 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6297 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6298 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6299 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6300 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6301
6302 <p><blockquote>
6303 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6304 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6305 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6306 </blockquote></p>
6307
6308 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6309 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6310 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6311 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6312 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6313 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6314 hard to explain.</p>
6315
6316 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6317 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6318 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6319 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6320 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6321 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6322 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6323 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6324 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6325 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6326 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6327 mode).</p>
6328
6329 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6330 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6331 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6332 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6333 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6334 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6335 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6336 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6337 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6338
6339 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6340 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6341 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6342 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6343 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6344 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6345 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6346 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6347
6348 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6349 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6350 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6351
6352       </div>
6353       <div class="tags">
6354
6355
6356         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>.
6357
6358
6359       </div>
6360     </div>
6361     <div class="padding"></div>
6362
6363     <div class="entry">
6364       <div class="title">
6365         <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>
6366       </div>
6367       <div class="date">
6368         30th July 2011
6369       </div>
6370       <div class="body">
6371         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6372 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6373 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6374 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6375 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6376 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6377 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6378 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6379 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6380 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6381 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6382 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6383 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6384
6385 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6386 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6387 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6388 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6389 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6390 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6391 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6392 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6393 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6394
6395 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6396 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6397 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6398 is presented.</p>
6399
6400 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6401 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6402 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6403 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6404 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6405 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6406 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6407 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6408 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6409 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6410 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6411 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6412 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6413 find time to push this forward.</p>
6414
6415       </div>
6416       <div class="tags">
6417
6418
6419         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>.
6420
6421
6422       </div>
6423     </div>
6424     <div class="padding"></div>
6425
6426     <div class="entry">
6427       <div class="title">
6428         <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>
6429       </div>
6430       <div class="date">
6431         29th July 2011
6432       </div>
6433       <div class="body">
6434         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6435 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6436 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6437 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6438 issues.</p>
6439
6440 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6441 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6442 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6443
6444 <ol>
6445
6446 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6447 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6448 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6449 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6450 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6451 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6452 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6453 Debian.</li>
6454
6455 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6456 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6457 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6458 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6459 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6460 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6461 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6462 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6463 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6464 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6465 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6466 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6467 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6468
6469 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6470 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6471 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6472 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6473 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6474 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6475 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6476 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6477 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6478 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6479
6480 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6481 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6482 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6483 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6484 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6485 latter behaviour.</li>
6486
6487 </ol>
6488
6489 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6490 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6491 it do not matter much.</p>
6492
6493 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6494 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6495 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6496
6497       </div>
6498       <div class="tags">
6499
6500
6501         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>.
6502
6503
6504       </div>
6505     </div>
6506     <div class="padding"></div>
6507
6508     <div class="entry">
6509       <div class="title">
6510         <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>
6511       </div>
6512       <div class="date">
6513         26th July 2011
6514       </div>
6515       <div class="body">
6516         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6517 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6518 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6519 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6520 security support for a few years.</p>
6521
6522 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6523 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6524 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6525 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6526 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6527 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6528 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6529 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6530 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6531 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6532 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6533 easier in the future.</p>
6534
6535 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6536 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6537 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6538 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6539 do not have time for.</p>
6540
6541       </div>
6542       <div class="tags">
6543
6544
6545         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>.
6546
6547
6548       </div>
6549     </div>
6550     <div class="padding"></div>
6551
6552     <div class="entry">
6553       <div class="title">
6554         <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>
6555       </div>
6556       <div class="date">
6557          3rd April 2011
6558       </div>
6559       <div class="body">
6560         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6561 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6562 update in English.</p>
6563
6564 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6565 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6566 of the British service
6567 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6568 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6569 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6570 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6571 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6572 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6573 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6574 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6575 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6576 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6577 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6578 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6579 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6580
6581 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6582 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6583 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6584 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6585 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6586 public infrastructure.</p>
6587
6588 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6589 such service?</p>
6590
6591       </div>
6592       <div class="tags">
6593
6594
6595         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>.
6596
6597
6598       </div>
6599     </div>
6600     <div class="padding"></div>
6601
6602     <div class="entry">
6603       <div class="title">
6604         <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>
6605       </div>
6606       <div class="date">
6607         28th January 2011
6608       </div>
6609       <div class="body">
6610         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6611 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6612 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6613 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6614 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6615 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6616 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6617 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6618 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6619 out which security holes were present in our free software
6620 collection.</p>
6621
6622 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6623 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6624 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6625 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6626 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6627 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6628 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6629 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6630 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6631 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6632 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6633 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6634 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6635 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6636 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6637 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6638
6639 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6640 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6641 check out, one could look up
6642 <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
6643 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6644 The most recent one is
6645 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6646 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6647 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6648
6649 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6650 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6651 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6652 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6653 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6654 security issues out.</p>
6655
6656 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6657 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6658 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6659 RHEL is providing
6660 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6661 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6662 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6663
6664 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6665 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6666 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6667 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6668 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6669 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6670 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6671 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6672 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6673 established soon.</p>
6674
6675 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6676 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6677 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6678 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6679 for their packages.</p>
6680
6681       </div>
6682       <div class="tags">
6683
6684
6685         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>.
6686
6687
6688       </div>
6689     </div>
6690     <div class="padding"></div>
6691
6692     <div class="entry">
6693       <div class="title">
6694         <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>
6695       </div>
6696       <div class="date">
6697         23rd January 2011
6698       </div>
6699       <div class="body">
6700         <p>In the
6701 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6702 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6703 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6704 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6705 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6706 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6707 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6708 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6709 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6710 one of my machines like this:</p>
6711
6712 <pre>
6713 loaded modules:
6714 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6715 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6716 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6717 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6718 10de:03ec pata_amd
6719 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6720 1022:1103 k8temp
6721 109e:036e bttv
6722 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6723 11ab:4364 sky2
6724 </pre>
6725
6726 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6727 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6728
6729 <pre>
6730 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6731     echo loaded pci modules:
6732     (
6733         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6734         for address in * ; do
6735             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6736                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6737                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6738                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6739                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6740                     echo "$id $module"
6741                 fi
6742             fi
6743         done
6744     )
6745     echo
6746 fi
6747 </pre>
6748
6749 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6750 mappings:</p>
6751
6752 <pre>
6753 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6754     echo loaded usb modules:
6755     (
6756         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6757         for address in * ; do
6758             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6759                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6760                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6761                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6762                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6763                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6764                         echo "$id $module"
6765                     fi
6766                 fi
6767             fi
6768         done
6769     )
6770     echo
6771 fi
6772 </pre>
6773
6774 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6775 well.</p>
6776
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="tags">
6779
6780
6781         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>.
6782
6783
6784       </div>
6785     </div>
6786     <div class="padding"></div>
6787
6788     <div class="entry">
6789       <div class="title">
6790         <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>
6791       </div>
6792       <div class="date">
6793         22nd December 2010
6794       </div>
6795       <div class="body">
6796         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6797 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6798 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6799 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6800 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6801 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6802 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6803 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6804 university.</p>
6805
6806 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6807 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6808 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6809 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6810 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6811 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6812 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6813 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6814
6815 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6816 I perform on a new model.</p>
6817
6818 <ul>
6819
6820 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6821 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6822 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6823
6824 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6825 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6826
6827 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6828 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6829 reported by the program.</li>
6830
6831 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6832 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6833 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6834 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6835 normally test this by playing
6836 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6837 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6838
6839 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6840 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6841
6842 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6843 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6844
6845 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6846 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6847
6848 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6849 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6850 few.</li>
6851
6852 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6853 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6854 notice this.</li>
6855
6856 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6857 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6858 resume.</li>
6859
6860 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6861 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6862 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6863 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6864 not.</li>
6865
6866 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6867 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6868 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6869 existence.</li>
6870
6871 </ul>
6872
6873 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6874 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6875 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6876 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6877 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6878 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6879 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6880 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6881
6882       </div>
6883       <div class="tags">
6884
6885
6886         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>.
6887
6888
6889       </div>
6890     </div>
6891     <div class="padding"></div>
6892
6893     <div class="entry">
6894       <div class="title">
6895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6896       </div>
6897       <div class="date">
6898         11th December 2010
6899       </div>
6900       <div class="body">
6901         <p>As I continue to explore
6902 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6903 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6904 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6905
6906 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6907 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6908 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6909 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6910 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6911 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6912 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6913 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6914 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6915 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6916 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6917 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6918 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6919 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6920 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6921 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6922 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6923 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6924 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6925 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6926
6927 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6928 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6929 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6930 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6931 If the Skolelinux foundation
6932 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6933 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6934 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6935 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6936 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6937 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6938 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6939 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6940
6941 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6942 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6943 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6944 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6945 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6946 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6947 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6948 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6949 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6950 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6951 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6952 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6953 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6954 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6955 currencies.</p>
6956
6957 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6958 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6959 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6960 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6961 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6962 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6963 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6964 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6965 BitCoins.  Check out
6966 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6967 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6968 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6969 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6970 yet.</p>
6971
6972 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6973 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6974 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6975 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6976 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6977
6978       </div>
6979       <div class="tags">
6980
6981
6982         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>.
6983
6984
6985       </div>
6986     </div>
6987     <div class="padding"></div>
6988
6989     <div class="entry">
6990       <div class="title">
6991         <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>
6992       </div>
6993       <div class="date">
6994         10th December 2010
6995       </div>
6996       <div class="body">
6997         <p>With this weeks lawless
6998 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6999 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
7000 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7001 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7002 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7003 A blog post from
7004 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7005 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7006 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7007 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
7008 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7009 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7010 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
7011
7012 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7013 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7014 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7015 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7016 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7017 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7018 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7019 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7020 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7021 Debian</a> soon.</p>
7022
7023 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7024 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7025 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7026 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7027 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7028 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7029 you can even get
7030 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
7031 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7032 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
7033 on the current exchange rates.</p>
7034
7035 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7036 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7037 donations to the address
7038 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
7039
7040       </div>
7041       <div class="tags">
7042
7043
7044         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>.
7045
7046
7047       </div>
7048     </div>
7049     <div class="padding"></div>
7050
7051     <div class="entry">
7052       <div class="title">
7053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
7054       </div>
7055       <div class="date">
7056         27th November 2010
7057       </div>
7058       <div class="body">
7059         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7060 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7061 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7062 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7063 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
7064 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7065 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7066 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
7067
7068 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7069 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7070 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
7071 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7072 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7073 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
7074 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7075 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7076 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
7077 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7078 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
7079
7080 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7081 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7082 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
7083 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7084 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
7085 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7086 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7087 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7088 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7089 what is going on.</p>
7090
7091       </div>
7092       <div class="tags">
7093
7094
7095         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>.
7096
7097
7098       </div>
7099     </div>
7100     <div class="padding"></div>
7101
7102     <div class="entry">
7103       <div class="title">
7104         <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>
7105       </div>
7106       <div class="date">
7107         22nd November 2010
7108       </div>
7109       <div class="body">
7110         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7111 upgrade testing of the
7112 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7113 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
7114 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7115 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
7116
7117 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7118
7119 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7120
7121 <blockquote><p>
7122   apache2.2-bin
7123   aptdaemon
7124   baobab
7125   binfmt-support
7126   browser-plugin-gnash
7127   cheese-common
7128   cli-common
7129   cups-pk-helper
7130   dmz-cursor-theme
7131   empathy
7132   empathy-common
7133   freedesktop-sound-theme
7134   freeglut3
7135   gconf-defaults-service
7136   gdm-themes
7137   gedit-plugins
7138   geoclue
7139   geoclue-hostip
7140   geoclue-localnet
7141   geoclue-manual
7142   geoclue-yahoo
7143   gnash
7144   gnash-common
7145   gnome
7146   gnome-backgrounds
7147   gnome-cards-data
7148   gnome-codec-install
7149   gnome-core
7150   gnome-desktop-environment
7151   gnome-disk-utility
7152   gnome-screenshot
7153   gnome-search-tool
7154   gnome-session-canberra
7155   gnome-system-log
7156   gnome-themes-extras
7157   gnome-themes-more
7158   gnome-user-share
7159   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7160   gstreamer0.10-tools
7161   gtk2-engines
7162   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7163   gtk2-engines-smooth
7164   hamster-applet
7165   libapache2-mod-dnssd
7166   libapr1
7167   libaprutil1
7168   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7169   libaprutil1-ldap
7170   libart2.0-cil
7171   libboost-date-time1.42.0
7172   libboost-python1.42.0
7173   libboost-thread1.42.0
7174   libchamplain-0.4-0
7175   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
7176   libcheese-gtk18
7177   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7178   libcryptui0
7179   libdiscid0
7180   libelf1
7181   libepc-1.0-2
7182   libepc-common
7183   libepc-ui-1.0-2
7184   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7185   libfreerdp0
7186   libgconf2.0-cil
7187   libgdata-common
7188   libgdata7
7189   libgdu-gtk0
7190   libgee2
7191   libgeoclue0
7192   libgexiv2-0
7193   libgif4
7194   libglade2.0-cil
7195   libglib2.0-cil
7196   libgmime2.4-cil
7197   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7198   libgnome2.24-cil
7199   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7200   libgpod-common
7201   libgpod4
7202   libgtk2.0-cil
7203   libgtkglext1
7204   libgtksourceview2.0-common
7205   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7206   libmono-addins0.2-cil
7207   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7208   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7209   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7210   libmono-posix2.0-cil
7211   libmono-security2.0-cil
7212   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7213   libmono-system2.0-cil
7214   libmtp8
7215   libmusicbrainz3-6
7216   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7217   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7218   libopal3.6.8
7219   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
7220   libpt2.6.7
7221   libpython2.6
7222   librpm1
7223   librpmio1
7224   libsdl1.2debian
7225   libsrtp0
7226   libssh-4
7227   libtelepathy-farsight0
7228   libtelepathy-glib0
7229   libtidy-0.99-0
7230   media-player-info
7231   mesa-utils
7232   mono-2.0-gac
7233   mono-gac
7234   mono-runtime
7235   nautilus-sendto
7236   nautilus-sendto-empathy
7237   p7zip-full
7238   pkg-config
7239   python-aptdaemon
7240   python-aptdaemon-gtk
7241   python-axiom
7242   python-beautifulsoup
7243   python-bugbuddy
7244   python-clientform
7245   python-coherence
7246   python-configobj
7247   python-crypto
7248   python-cupshelpers
7249   python-elementtree
7250   python-epsilon
7251   python-evolution
7252   python-feedparser
7253   python-gdata
7254   python-gdbm
7255   python-gst0.10
7256   python-gtkglext1
7257   python-gtksourceview2
7258   python-httplib2
7259   python-louie
7260   python-mako
7261   python-markupsafe
7262   python-mechanize
7263   python-nevow
7264   python-notify
7265   python-opengl
7266   python-openssl
7267   python-pam
7268   python-pkg-resources
7269   python-pyasn1
7270   python-pysqlite2
7271   python-rdflib
7272   python-serial
7273   python-tagpy
7274   python-twisted-bin
7275   python-twisted-conch
7276   python-twisted-core
7277   python-twisted-web
7278   python-utidylib
7279   python-webkit
7280   python-xdg
7281   python-zope.interface
7282   remmina
7283   remmina-plugin-data
7284   remmina-plugin-rdp
7285   remmina-plugin-vnc
7286   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7287   rhythmbox-plugins
7288   rpm-common
7289   rpm2cpio
7290   seahorse-plugins
7291   shotwell
7292   software-center
7293   system-config-printer-udev
7294   telepathy-gabble
7295   telepathy-mission-control-5
7296   telepathy-salut
7297   tomboy
7298   totem
7299   totem-coherence
7300   totem-mozilla
7301   totem-plugins
7302   transmission-common
7303   xdg-user-dirs
7304   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
7305   xserver-xephyr
7306 </p></blockquote>
7307
7308 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7309
7310 <blockquote><p>
7311   cheese
7312   ekiga
7313   eog
7314   epiphany-extensions
7315   evolution-exchange
7316   fast-user-switch-applet
7317   file-roller
7318   gcalctool
7319   gconf-editor
7320   gdm
7321   gedit
7322   gedit-common
7323   gnome-games
7324   gnome-games-data
7325   gnome-nettool
7326   gnome-system-tools
7327   gnome-themes
7328   gnuchess
7329   gucharmap
7330   guile-1.8-libs
7331   libavahi-ui0
7332   libdmx1
7333   libgalago3
7334   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7335   libgtksourceview2.0-0
7336   liblircclient0
7337   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7338   libspeexdsp1
7339   libsvga1
7340   rhythmbox
7341   seahorse
7342   sound-juicer
7343   system-config-printer
7344   totem-common
7345   transmission-gtk
7346   vinagre
7347   vino
7348 </p></blockquote>
7349
7350 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7351
7352 <blockquote><p>
7353   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7354 </p></blockquote>
7355
7356 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7357
7358 <blockquote><p>
7359 [nothing]
7360 </p></blockquote>
7361
7362 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7363
7364 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7365
7366 <blockquote><p>
7367   ksmserver
7368 </p></blockquote>
7369
7370 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7371
7372 <blockquote><p>
7373   kwin
7374   network-manager-kde
7375 </p></blockquote>
7376
7377 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7378
7379 <blockquote><p>
7380   arts
7381   dolphin
7382   freespacenotifier
7383   google-gadgets-gst
7384   google-gadgets-xul
7385   kappfinder
7386   kcalc
7387   kcharselect
7388   kde-core
7389   kde-plasma-desktop
7390   kde-standard
7391   kde-window-manager
7392   kdeartwork
7393   kdeartwork-emoticons
7394   kdeartwork-style
7395   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7396   kdebase
7397   kdebase-apps
7398   kdebase-workspace
7399   kdebase-workspace-bin
7400   kdebase-workspace-data
7401   kdeeject
7402   kdelibs
7403   kdeplasma-addons
7404   kdeutils
7405   kdewallpapers
7406   kdf
7407   kfloppy
7408   kgpg
7409   khelpcenter4
7410   kinfocenter
7411   konq-plugins-l10n
7412   konqueror-nsplugins
7413   kscreensaver
7414   kscreensaver-xsavers
7415   ktimer
7416   kwrite
7417   libgle3
7418   libkde4-ruby1.8
7419   libkonq5
7420   libkonq5-templates
7421   libnetpbm10
7422   libplasma-ruby
7423   libplasma-ruby1.8
7424   libqt4-ruby1.8
7425   marble-data
7426   marble-plugins
7427   netpbm
7428   nuvola-icon-theme
7429   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7430   plasma-desktop
7431   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7432   plasma-runners-addons
7433   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7434   plasma-scriptengine-python
7435   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7436   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7437   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7438   plasma-scriptengines
7439   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7440   plasma-widget-folderview
7441   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7442   ruby
7443   sweeper
7444   update-notifier-kde
7445   xscreensaver-data-extra
7446   xscreensaver-gl
7447   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7448   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7449 </p></blockquote>
7450
7451 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7452
7453 <blockquote><p>
7454   ark
7455   google-gadgets-common
7456   google-gadgets-qt
7457   htdig
7458   kate
7459   kdebase-bin
7460   kdebase-data
7461   kdepasswd
7462   kfind
7463   klipper
7464   konq-plugins
7465   konqueror
7466   ksysguard
7467   ksysguardd
7468   libarchive1
7469   libcln6
7470   libeet1
7471   libeina-svn-06
7472   libggadget-1.0-0b
7473   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7474   libgps19
7475   libkdecorations4
7476   libkephal4
7477   libkonq4
7478   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7479   libkscreensaver5
7480   libksgrd4
7481   libksignalplotter4
7482   libkunitconversion4
7483   libkwineffects1a
7484   libmarblewidget4
7485   libntrack-qt4-1
7486   libntrack0
7487   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7488   libplasmaclock4a
7489   libplasmagenericshell4
7490   libprocesscore4a
7491   libprocessui4a
7492   libqalculate5
7493   libqedje0a
7494   libqtruby4shared2
7495   libqzion0a
7496   libruby1.8
7497   libscim8c2a
7498   libsmokekdecore4-3
7499   libsmokekdeui4-3
7500   libsmokekfile3
7501   libsmokekhtml3
7502   libsmokekio3
7503   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7504   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7505   libsmokekparts3
7506   libsmokektexteditor3
7507   libsmokekutils3
7508   libsmokenepomuk3
7509   libsmokephonon3
7510   libsmokeplasma3
7511   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7512   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7513   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7514   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7515   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7516   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7517   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7518   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7519   libsmokeqttest4-3
7520   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7521   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7522   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7523   libsmokesolid3
7524   libsmokesoprano3
7525   libtaskmanager4a
7526   libtidy-0.99-0
7527   libweather-ion4a
7528   libxklavier16
7529   libxxf86misc1
7530   okteta
7531   oxygencursors
7532   plasma-dataengines-addons
7533   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7534   plasma-widget-lancelot
7535   plasma-widgets-addons
7536   plasma-widgets-workspace
7537   polkit-kde-1
7538   ruby1.8
7539   systemsettings
7540   update-notifier-common
7541 </p></blockquote>
7542
7543 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7544 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7545 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7546 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7547
7548       </div>
7549       <div class="tags">
7550
7551
7552         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>.
7553
7554
7555       </div>
7556     </div>
7557     <div class="padding"></div>
7558
7559     <div class="entry">
7560       <div class="title">
7561         <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>
7562       </div>
7563       <div class="date">
7564         22nd November 2010
7565       </div>
7566       <div class="body">
7567         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7568 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7569 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7570 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7571 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7572 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7573 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7574 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7575 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7576
7577 <p>I found
7578 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7579 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7580 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7581 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7582 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7583 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7584
7585 <pre>
7586 #!/bin/sh
7587
7588 # Based on
7589 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7590
7591 set -e
7592 set -x
7593
7594 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7595     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7596     exit 1
7597 else
7598     host="$1"
7599 fi
7600
7601 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7602     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7603     exit 1
7604 fi
7605
7606 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7607 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7608 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7609 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7610
7611 img=$host.img
7612 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7613 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7614
7615 parted $img mklabel msdos
7616 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7617 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7618 parted $img set 1 boot on
7619
7620 modprobe dm-mod
7621 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7622 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7623
7624 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7625 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7626 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7627
7628 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7629 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7630 </pre>
7631
7632 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7633 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7634
7635 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7636 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7637 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7638 seem to work just fine.</p>
7639
7640       </div>
7641       <div class="tags">
7642
7643
7644         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>.
7645
7646
7647       </div>
7648     </div>
7649     <div class="padding"></div>
7650
7651     <div class="entry">
7652       <div class="title">
7653         <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>
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="date">
7656         20th November 2010
7657       </div>
7658       <div class="body">
7659         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7661 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7662 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7663
7664 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7665 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7666 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7667
7668 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7669
7670 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7671
7672 <blockquote><p>
7673   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7674   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7675   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7676   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7677   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7678   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7679   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7680   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7681   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7682   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7683   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7684   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7685   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7686   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7687   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7688   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7689   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7690   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7691   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7692   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7693   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7694   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7695   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7696   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7697   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7698   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7699   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7700   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7701   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7702   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7703   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7704   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7705   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7706   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7707   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7708   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7709   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7710   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7711   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7712   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7713   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7714   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7715   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7716   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7717   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7718   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7719   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7720   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7721   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7722   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7723   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7724   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7725   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7726   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7727   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7728   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7729   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7730   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7731   zip
7732 </p></blockquote>
7733
7734 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7735
7736 <blockquote><p>
7737   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7738   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7739   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7740   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7741   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7742   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7743   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7744   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7745   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7746   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7747   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7748   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7749   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7750   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7751   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7752   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7753   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7754   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7755   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7756   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7757   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7758   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7759   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7760   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7761   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7762   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7763   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7764   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7765   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7766 </p></blockquote>
7767
7768 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7769
7770 <blockquote><p>
7771   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7772 </p></blockquote>
7773
7774 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7775
7776 <blockquote><p>
7777 [nothing]
7778 </p></blockquote>
7779
7780 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7781
7782 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7783
7784 <blockquote><p>
7785   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7786   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7787   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7788   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7789   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7790   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7791   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7792   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7793   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7794   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7795   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7796   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7797   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7798   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7799   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7800   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7801   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7802   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7803   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7804   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7805   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7806   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7807   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7808   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7809   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7810   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7811   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7812   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7813   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7814   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7815 </p></blockquote>
7816
7817 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7818
7819 <blockquote><p>
7820   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7821   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7822   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7823   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7824   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7825   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7826   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7827   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7828   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7829   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7830   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7831   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7832   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7833   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7834   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7835   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7836   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7837   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7838   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7839   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7840   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7841   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7842   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7843   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7844   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7845   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7846   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7847   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7848   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7849   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7850   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7851   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7852   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7853 </p></blockquote>
7854
7855 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7856
7857 <blockquote><p>
7858   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7859   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7860   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7861   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7862   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7863   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7864   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7865 </p></blockquote>
7866
7867 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7868
7869 <blockquote><p>
7870   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7871 </p></blockquote>
7872
7873       </div>
7874       <div class="tags">
7875
7876
7877         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>.
7878
7879
7880       </div>
7881     </div>
7882     <div class="padding"></div>
7883
7884     <div class="entry">
7885       <div class="title">
7886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7887       </div>
7888       <div class="date">
7889         20th November 2010
7890       </div>
7891       <div class="body">
7892         <p>Answering
7893 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7894 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7895 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7896 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7897 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7898 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7899 releases out more often.</p>
7900
7901 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7902 I have considered setting up a <a
7903 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7904 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7905 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7906 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7907 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7908 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7909 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7910 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7911 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7912 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7913 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7914 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7915
7916       </div>
7917       <div class="tags">
7918
7919
7920         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>.
7921
7922
7923       </div>
7924     </div>
7925     <div class="padding"></div>
7926
7927     <div class="entry">
7928       <div class="title">
7929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7930       </div>
7931       <div class="date">
7932          9th November 2010
7933       </div>
7934       <div class="body">
7935         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7936
7937 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7938 3D linked in from
7939 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7940 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7941
7942       </div>
7943       <div class="tags">
7944
7945
7946         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>.
7947
7948
7949       </div>
7950     </div>
7951     <div class="padding"></div>
7952
7953     <div class="entry">
7954       <div class="title">
7955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7956       </div>
7957       <div class="date">
7958         24th October 2010
7959       </div>
7960       <div class="body">
7961         <p>Some updates.</p>
7962
7963 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7964 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7965 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7966 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7967 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7968 :)</p>
7969
7970 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7971 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7972 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7973 It is called
7974 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7975 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7976 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7977 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7978 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7979 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7980
7981 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7982 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7983 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7984 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7985 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7986 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7987 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7988 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7989 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7990 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7991
7992       </div>
7993       <div class="tags">
7994
7995
7996         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>.
7997
7998
7999       </div>
8000     </div>
8001     <div class="padding"></div>
8002
8003     <div class="entry">
8004       <div class="title">
8005         <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>
8006       </div>
8007       <div class="date">
8008          4th September 2010
8009       </div>
8010       <div class="body">
8011         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
8012 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
8013 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
8014 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
8015 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
8016 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
8017 installed.</p>
8018
8019 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
8020 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
8021 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
8022 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
8023 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8024 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
8025 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
8026 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
8027 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
8028
8029 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
8030 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
8031 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
8032 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
8033 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
8034 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
8035 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
8036 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
8037 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
8038 pages they want to visit.</p>
8039
8040 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
8041 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
8042 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
8043 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
8044 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
8045 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
8046 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
8047 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
8048 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
8049 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
8050 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
8051
8052       </div>
8053       <div class="tags">
8054
8055
8056         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>.
8057
8058
8059       </div>
8060     </div>
8061     <div class="padding"></div>
8062
8063     <div class="entry">
8064       <div class="title">
8065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
8066       </div>
8067       <div class="date">
8068         27th July 2010
8069       </div>
8070       <div class="body">
8071         <p>I discovered this while doing
8072 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
8073 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
8074 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
8075 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
8076 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
8077
8078 <p>An example is from todays
8079 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
8080 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
8081 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
8082 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
8083 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
8084 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
8085 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
8086
8087 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
8088
8089 <blockquote><pre>
8090 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
8091  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
8092   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
8093 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
8094  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
8095 </pre></blockquote>
8096
8097 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
8098 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
8099 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
8100 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
8101 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
8102 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
8103 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
8104 of dependency loops.</p>
8105
8106 <p>Thanks to
8107 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
8108 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
8109 dependencies
8110 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
8111 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
8112
8113 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
8114 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
8115 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
8116 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
8117 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
8118 it.</p>
8119
8120       </div>
8121       <div class="tags">
8122
8123
8124         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>.
8125
8126
8127       </div>
8128     </div>
8129     <div class="padding"></div>
8130
8131     <div class="entry">
8132       <div class="title">
8133         <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>
8134       </div>
8135       <div class="date">
8136         17th July 2010
8137       </div>
8138       <div class="body">
8139         <p>This is a
8140 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8141 on my
8142 <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
8143 work</a> on
8144 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8145 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8146
8147 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8148 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8149 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8150 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8151
8152 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8153 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8154 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8155
8156 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8157
8158 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8159 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8160 the web.
8161
8162 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8163 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8164 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8165 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8166 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8167 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8168
8169 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8170 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8171 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8172 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8173 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8174 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8175 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8176 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8177 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8178 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8179 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8180 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8181 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8182 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8183 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8184 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8185
8186 <blockquote><pre>
8187 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8188   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8189   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8190   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8191   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8192   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8193   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8194
8195 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8196   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8197   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8198   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8199   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8200   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8201 </pre></blockquote>
8202
8203 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8204 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8205 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8206 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8207 also exist.</p>
8208
8209 <blockquote><pre>
8210 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8211 objectclass: top
8212 objectclass: dnsdomain
8213 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8214 dc: tjener
8215 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8216 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8217
8218 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8219 objectclass: top
8220 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8221 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8222 dc: 2
8223 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8224 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8225 </pre></blockquote>
8226
8227 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8228 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8229 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8230 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8231 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8232 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8233 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8234 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8235 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8236 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8237 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8238 instead.</p>
8239
8240 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8241 like this:</p>
8242
8243 <blockquote><pre>
8244 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8245   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8246   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8247   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8248   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8249   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8250
8251 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8252   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8253 </pre></blockquote>
8254
8255 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8256 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8257 reverse lookups.</p>
8258
8259 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8260 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8261 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8262 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8263
8264 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8265 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8266 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8267
8268 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8269 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8270 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8271 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8272 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8273
8274 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8275 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8276 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8277 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8278 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8279
8280 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8281 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8282 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8283 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8284 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8285 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8286
8287 <blockquote><pre>
8288 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8289     SUP top
8290     AUXILIARY
8291     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8292           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8293           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8294           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8295           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8296     ))
8297 </pre></blockquote>
8298
8299 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8300 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8301 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8302 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8303 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8304 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8305
8306 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8307
8308 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8309 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8310 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8311 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8312 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8313
8314 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8315 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8316 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8317 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8318
8319 <blockquote><pre>
8320 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8321 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8322 </pre></blockquote>
8323
8324 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8325 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8326 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8327 search result is this entry:</p>
8328
8329 <blockquote><pre>
8330 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8331 cn: dhcp
8332 objectClass: top
8333 objectClass: dhcpServer
8334 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8335 </pre></blockquote>
8336
8337 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8338 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8339 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8340 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8341 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8342 The search result is this entry:</p>
8343
8344 <blockquote><pre>
8345 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8346 cn: DHCP Config
8347 objectClass: top
8348 objectClass: dhcpService
8349 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8350 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8351 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8352 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8353 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8354 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8355 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8356 </pre></blockquote>
8357
8358 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8359 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8360 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8361 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8362 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8363 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8364 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8365 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8366 related computer objects.</p>
8367
8368 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8369 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8370 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8371 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8372 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8373 like:</p>
8374
8375 <blockquote><pre>
8376 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8377 cn: hostname
8378 objectClass: top
8379 objectClass: dhcpHost
8380 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8381 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8382 </pre></blockquote>
8383
8384 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8385 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8386 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8387 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8388 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8389 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8390 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8391 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8392 structural object class.
8393
8394 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8395
8396 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8397 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8398 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8399 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8400 in the configuration.</p>
8401
8402 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8403 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8404 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8405 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8406 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8407 structure.</p>
8408
8409 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8410 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8411
8412 <blockquote><pre>
8413 ou=services
8414   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8415     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8416     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8417       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8418         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8419     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8420       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8421         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8422     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8423       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8424 </pre></blockquote>
8425
8426 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8427 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8428 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8429 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8430
8431 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8432 like this:</p>
8433
8434 <blockquote><pre>
8435 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8436 dc: hostname
8437 objectClass: top
8438 objectClass: dhcpHost
8439 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8440 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8441 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8442 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8443 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8444 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8445 </pre></blockquote>
8446
8447 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8448 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8449 auxiliary object class.</p>
8450
8451       </div>
8452       <div class="tags">
8453
8454
8455         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>.
8456
8457
8458       </div>
8459     </div>
8460     <div class="padding"></div>
8461
8462     <div class="entry">
8463       <div class="title">
8464         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8465       </div>
8466       <div class="date">
8467         14th July 2010
8468       </div>
8469       <div class="body">
8470         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8471 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8472 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8473 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8474 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8475
8476 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8477 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8478
8479 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8480 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8481 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8482 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8483 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8484 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8485
8486 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8487 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8488 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8489 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8490 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8491 seem to work.</p>
8492
8493 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8494 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8495 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8496 this:</p>
8497
8498 <blockquote><pre>
8499   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8500   cn: hostname
8501   objectClass: dhcphost
8502   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8503   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8504   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8505   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8506   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8507   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8508   ldapconfigsound: Y
8509 </pre></blockquote>
8510
8511 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8512 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8513 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8514 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8515
8516 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8517 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8518 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8519 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8520 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8521 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8522 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8523 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8524
8525 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8526 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8527
8528       </div>
8529       <div class="tags">
8530
8531
8532         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>.
8533
8534
8535       </div>
8536     </div>
8537     <div class="padding"></div>
8538
8539     <div class="entry">
8540       <div class="title">
8541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8542       </div>
8543       <div class="date">
8544         11th July 2010
8545       </div>
8546       <div class="body">
8547         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8548 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8549 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8550 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8551
8552 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8553 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8554 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8555 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8556 LTSP clients.</p>
8557
8558 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8559 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8560 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8561
8562 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8563 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8564 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8565
8566 <blockquote><pre>
8567 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8568 #
8569 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8570 #
8571 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8572 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8573 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8574 #
8575 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8576 # existence of attribute names.
8577 #
8578 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8579 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8580 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8581 #
8582 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8583 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8584 #
8585 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8586 #     SUP top
8587 #     AUXILIARY
8588 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8589
8590 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8591 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8592     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8593     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8594         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8595         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8596             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8597             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8598             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8599             # bass value on to clients
8600             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8601         done
8602     done
8603 fi
8604 </pre></blockquote>
8605
8606 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8607 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8608 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8609 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8610 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8611
8612 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8614
8615 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8616 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8617 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8618 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8619 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8620 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8621
8622       </div>
8623       <div class="tags">
8624
8625
8626         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>.
8627
8628
8629       </div>
8630     </div>
8631     <div class="padding"></div>
8632
8633     <div class="entry">
8634       <div class="title">
8635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8636       </div>
8637       <div class="date">
8638          9th July 2010
8639       </div>
8640       <div class="body">
8641         <p>Since
8642 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8643 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8644 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8645 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8646 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8647 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8648 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8649 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8650 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8651 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8652 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8653 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8654 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8655
8656       </div>
8657       <div class="tags">
8658
8659
8660         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>.
8661
8662
8663       </div>
8664     </div>
8665     <div class="padding"></div>
8666
8667     <div class="entry">
8668       <div class="title">
8669         <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>
8670       </div>
8671       <div class="date">
8672          3rd July 2010
8673       </div>
8674       <div class="body">
8675         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8676 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8677 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8678 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8679 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8680 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8681 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8682 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8683
8684 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8685 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8686 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8687 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8688 publish the difference.</p>
8689
8690 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8691
8692 <blockquote><p>
8693   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8694   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8695   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8696   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8697   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8698   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8699   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8700   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8701 </p></blockquote>
8702
8703 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8704
8705 <blockquote><p>
8706   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8707   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8708   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8709   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8710   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8711   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8712   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8713   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8714   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8715   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8716   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8717   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8718   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8719   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8720   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8721   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8722   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8723   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8724   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8725   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8726 </p></blockquote>
8727
8728 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8729
8730 <blockquote><p>
8731   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8732   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8733   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8734   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8735   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8736   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8737   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8738   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8739   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8740   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8741   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8742   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8743   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8744   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8745   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8746   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8747   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8748   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8749   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8750   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8751   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8752 </p></blockquote>
8753
8754 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8755
8756 <blockquote><p>
8757   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8758   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8759   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8760 </p></blockquote>
8761
8762 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8763 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8764 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8765 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8766 the difference somewhat.
8767
8768       </div>
8769       <div class="tags">
8770
8771
8772         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>.
8773
8774
8775       </div>
8776     </div>
8777     <div class="padding"></div>
8778
8779     <div class="entry">
8780       <div class="title">
8781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="date">
8784         28th June 2010
8785       </div>
8786       <div class="body">
8787         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8788 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8789 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8790 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8791 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8792 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8793 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8794 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8795 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8796 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8797
8798 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8799 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8800 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8801 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8802 released.</p>
8803
8804 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8805 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8806 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8807 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8808
8809 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8810 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8811
8812 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8813 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8814 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8815 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8816 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8817
8818       </div>
8819       <div class="tags">
8820
8821
8822         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>.
8823
8824
8825       </div>
8826     </div>
8827     <div class="padding"></div>
8828
8829     <div class="entry">
8830       <div class="title">
8831         <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>
8832       </div>
8833       <div class="date">
8834         24th June 2010
8835       </div>
8836       <div class="body">
8837         <p>A while back, I
8838 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8839 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8840 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8841 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8842
8843 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8844 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8845 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8846 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8847
8848 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8849 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8850 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8851 Debian Edu.</p>
8852
8853 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8854 the
8855 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8856 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8857 available today from IETF.</p>
8858
8859 <pre>
8860 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8861 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8862 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8863  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8864         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8865         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8866 -       SUP top
8867 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8868         MUST cn
8869         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8870         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8871 </pre>
8872
8873 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8874 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8875 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8876
8877 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8878 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8879
8880       </div>
8881       <div class="tags">
8882
8883
8884         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>.
8885
8886
8887       </div>
8888     </div>
8889     <div class="padding"></div>
8890
8891     <div class="entry">
8892       <div class="title">
8893         <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>
8894       </div>
8895       <div class="date">
8896         16th June 2010
8897       </div>
8898       <div class="body">
8899         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8900 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8901 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8902 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8903 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8904 this:
8905
8906 <blockquote><pre>
8907 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8908 tasksel --new-install
8909 </pre></blockquote>
8910
8911 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8912 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8913 any output what so ever.
8914
8915 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8916 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8917 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8918 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8919 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8920 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8921 code like this:
8922
8923 <blockquote><pre>
8924 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8925 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8926 $cmd
8927 </pre></blockquote>
8928
8929 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8930 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8931 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8932 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8933 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8934 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8935 installation.</p>
8936
8937 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8938 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8939 like this.</p>
8940
8941       </div>
8942       <div class="tags">
8943
8944
8945         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>.
8946
8947
8948       </div>
8949     </div>
8950     <div class="padding"></div>
8951
8952     <div class="entry">
8953       <div class="title">
8954         <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>
8955       </div>
8956       <div class="date">
8957         13th June 2010
8958       </div>
8959       <div class="body">
8960         <p>My
8961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8962 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8963 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8964 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8965 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8966 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8967 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8968
8969 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8970 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8971 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8972 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8973 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8974 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8975 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8976 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8977
8978 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8979 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8980 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8981 too surprising.</p>
8982
8983 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8984 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8985 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8986 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8987 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8988 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8989 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8990 continue.</p>
8991
8992 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8993 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8994   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8995   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8996   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8997   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8998   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8999   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9000   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9001   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9002   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9003   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9004   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9005   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9006   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9007   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9008   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9009   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9010   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9011   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9012   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9013   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9014   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9015   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9016   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9017   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9018   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9019   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9020   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
9021   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
9022
9023 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
9024
9025 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
9026   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
9027   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
9028   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
9029   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9030   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
9031   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
9032   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
9033   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
9034   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
9035   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9036   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
9037   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
9038   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
9039   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
9040   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
9041   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
9042   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
9043   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
9044   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
9045   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
9046   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
9047   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
9048   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
9049   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
9050   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
9051   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
9052   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
9053   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
9054   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9055   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9056   zip</p>
9057
9058 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
9059
9060 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
9061   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
9062   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
9063   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
9064   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
9065   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
9066   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
9067   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
9068   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
9069   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
9070   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
9071   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
9072   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
9073   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
9074   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9075   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
9076   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
9077   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
9078   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
9079   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
9080   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
9081   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
9082   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
9083   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
9084   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
9085   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
9086   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
9087   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
9088
9089 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
9090 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
9091   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9092   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
9093   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
9094   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9095   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
9096   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
9097   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9098   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
9099   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
9100   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
9101   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
9102   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
9103   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
9104   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
9105   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
9106   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9107   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9108   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
9109   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
9110   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9111   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
9112   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
9113   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9114   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9115   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
9116   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
9117   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
9118   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
9119   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
9120   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
9121   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
9122   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
9123   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9124   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9125   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9126   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9127
9128
9129       </div>
9130       <div class="tags">
9131
9132
9133         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>.
9134
9135
9136       </div>
9137     </div>
9138     <div class="padding"></div>
9139
9140     <div class="entry">
9141       <div class="title">
9142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9143       </div>
9144       <div class="date">
9145         11th June 2010
9146       </div>
9147       <div class="body">
9148         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9149 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9150 have been discovered and reported in the process
9151 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9153 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9154 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9155 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9156
9157 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9158 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9159 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9160 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9161 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9162 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9163
9164 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9165 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9166 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9167 is created.  The bug report
9168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9169 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9170 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9171 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9172 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9173 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9174 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9175 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9176 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9177 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9178 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9179 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9180 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9181
9182 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9183 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9184 trick:</p>
9185
9186 <blockquote><pre>
9187 #!/bin/sh
9188 set -ex
9189
9190 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9191     desktop=$1
9192 else
9193     desktop=gnome
9194 fi
9195
9196 from=lenny
9197 to=squeeze
9198
9199 exec &lt; /dev/null
9200 unset LANG
9201 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9202 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9203 fuser -mv .
9204 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9205 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9206 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9207 #!/bin/sh
9208 exit 101
9209 EOF
9210 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9211 exit_cleanup() {
9212     umount $tmpdir/proc
9213 }
9214 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9215 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9216 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9217
9218 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9219
9220 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9221 # to return the correct answers.
9222 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9223     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9224
9225 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9226 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9227     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9228 #!/bin/sh
9229 exit 2
9230 EOF
9231     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9232 done
9233
9234 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9235 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9236 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9237 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9238
9239 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9240 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9241 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9242 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9243 fuser -mv
9244 </pre></blockquote>
9245
9246 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9247 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9248 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9249 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9250 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9251 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9252
9253 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9254 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9255 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9256 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9257 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9258 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9259 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9260
9261 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9262 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9263 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9264 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9265 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9266 packages.</p>
9267
9268       </div>
9269       <div class="tags">
9270
9271
9272         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>.
9273
9274
9275       </div>
9276     </div>
9277     <div class="padding"></div>
9278
9279     <div class="entry">
9280       <div class="title">
9281         <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>
9282       </div>
9283       <div class="date">
9284          6th June 2010
9285       </div>
9286       <div class="body">
9287         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9288 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9289 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9290 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9291 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9292 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9293 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9294
9295 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9296 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9297 COLUMNS):</p>
9298
9299 <blockquote><pre>
9300 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9301 previous=N
9302 PREVLEVEL=
9303 RUNLEVEL=
9304 runlevel=S
9305 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9306 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9307 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9308 </pre></blockquote>
9309
9310 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9311 script.</p>
9312
9313 <blockquote><pre>
9314 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9315 previous=N
9316 PREVLEVEL=N
9317 RUNLEVEL=S
9318 runlevel=S
9319 </pre></blockquote>
9320
9321 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9322 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9323 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9324
9325 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9326 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9327 choice.</p>
9328
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="tags">
9331
9332
9333         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>.
9334
9335
9336       </div>
9337     </div>
9338     <div class="padding"></div>
9339
9340     <div class="entry">
9341       <div class="title">
9342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9343       </div>
9344       <div class="date">
9345          6th June 2010
9346       </div>
9347       <div class="body">
9348         <p>Via the
9349 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9350 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9351 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9352 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9353 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9354
9355       </div>
9356       <div class="tags">
9357
9358
9359         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>.
9360
9361
9362       </div>
9363     </div>
9364     <div class="padding"></div>
9365
9366     <div class="entry">
9367       <div class="title">
9368         <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>
9369       </div>
9370       <div class="date">
9371          3rd June 2010
9372       </div>
9373       <div class="body">
9374         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9375 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9376 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9377 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9378 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9379
9380 <blockquote><pre>
9381 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9382   vendor                    count
9383   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9384     PowerEdge 1750              1
9385   IBM                           1
9386     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9387   Intel                         2
9388   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9389 maintainer:~#
9390 </pre></blockquote>
9391
9392 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9393 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9394 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9395 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9396 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9397
9398 <p>A larger list is
9399 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9400 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9401 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9402 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9403 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9404 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9405 collector.</p>
9406
9407       </div>
9408       <div class="tags">
9409
9410
9411         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>.
9412
9413
9414       </div>
9415     </div>
9416     <div class="padding"></div>
9417
9418     <div class="entry">
9419       <div class="title">
9420         <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>
9421       </div>
9422       <div class="date">
9423          1st June 2010
9424       </div>
9425       <div class="body">
9426         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9427 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9428 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9429 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9430 wait.</p>
9431
9432 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9433 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9434 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9435 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9436 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9437 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9438
9439 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9440 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9441 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9442 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9443 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9444 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9445 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9446 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9447
9448 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9449
9450       </div>
9451       <div class="tags">
9452
9453
9454         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>.
9455
9456
9457       </div>
9458     </div>
9459     <div class="padding"></div>
9460
9461     <div class="entry">
9462       <div class="title">
9463         <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>
9464       </div>
9465       <div class="date">
9466         27th May 2010
9467       </div>
9468       <div class="body">
9469         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9470 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9471 issues are known and should be solved:
9472
9473 <p><ul>
9474
9475 <li>The wicd package seen to
9476 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9477 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9478 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9479 seem to be on the case.</li>
9480
9481 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9482 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9483 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9484 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9485
9486 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9487 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9488 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9489 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9490 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9491 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9492 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9493 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9494
9495 </ul></p>
9496
9497 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9498 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9499 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9500 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9501
9502 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9503 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9504 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9505 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9506
9507 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9508
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="tags">
9511
9512
9513         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>.
9514
9515
9516       </div>
9517     </div>
9518     <div class="padding"></div>
9519
9520     <div class="entry">
9521       <div class="title">
9522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9523       </div>
9524       <div class="date">
9525         22nd May 2010
9526       </div>
9527       <div class="body">
9528         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9529 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9530 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9531 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9532
9533 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9534 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9535 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9536 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9537 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9538 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9539 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9540 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9541 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9542 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9543 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9544 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9545 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9546 going to work.</p>
9547
9548 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9549 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9550 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9551 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9552 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9553 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9554 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9555 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9556 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9557 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9558 Edu.</p>
9559
9560 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9561 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9562 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9563 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9564 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9565 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9566
9567 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9568 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9569
9570       </div>
9571       <div class="tags">
9572
9573
9574         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>.
9575
9576
9577       </div>
9578     </div>
9579     <div class="padding"></div>
9580
9581     <div class="entry">
9582       <div class="title">
9583         <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>
9584       </div>
9585       <div class="date">
9586         14th May 2010
9587       </div>
9588       <div class="body">
9589         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9590 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9591 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9592 expected, if I am to believe the
9593 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9594 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9595 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9596 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9597 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9598 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9599 version.</p>
9600
9601 More information about
9602 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9603 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9604 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9605 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9606
9607 <blockquote><pre>
9608 CONCURRENCY=none
9609 </pre></blockquote>
9610
9611 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9612 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9613 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9614 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9615
9616       </div>
9617       <div class="tags">
9618
9619
9620         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>.
9621
9622
9623       </div>
9624     </div>
9625     <div class="padding"></div>
9626
9627     <div class="entry">
9628       <div class="title">
9629         <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>
9630       </div>
9631       <div class="date">
9632         14th May 2010
9633       </div>
9634       <div class="body">
9635         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9636 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9637 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9638 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9639 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9640 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9641 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9642 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9643
9644 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9645 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9646 this on the collector host:</p>
9647
9648 <blockquote><pre>
9649 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9650 </pre></blockquote>
9651
9652 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9653 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9654
9655 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9656 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9657 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9658 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9659 written yet.</p>
9660
9661       </div>
9662       <div class="tags">
9663
9664
9665         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>.
9666
9667
9668       </div>
9669     </div>
9670     <div class="padding"></div>
9671
9672     <div class="entry">
9673       <div class="title">
9674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="date">
9677         13th May 2010
9678       </div>
9679       <div class="body">
9680         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9681 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9682 has been
9683 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9684
9685 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9686 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9687 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9688 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9689 based boot system.  Tollef is
9690 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9691 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9692 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9693 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9694 at the moment do not.</p>
9695
9696 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9697 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9698 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9699 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9700 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9701 way forward.</p>
9702
9703 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9704 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9705 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9706 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9707 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9708 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9709 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9710 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9711 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9712
9713       </div>
9714       <div class="tags">
9715
9716
9717         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>.
9718
9719
9720       </div>
9721     </div>
9722     <div class="padding"></div>
9723
9724     <div class="entry">
9725       <div class="title">
9726         <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>
9727       </div>
9728       <div class="date">
9729          6th May 2010
9730       </div>
9731       <div class="body">
9732         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9733 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9734 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9735 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9736 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9737 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9738 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9739
9740 <blockquote><pre>
9741 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9742 </pre></blockquote>
9743
9744 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9745 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9746 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9747 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9748 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9749 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9750 make this happen.</p>
9751
9752 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9753 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9754 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9755 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9756 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9757
9758 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9759 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9760 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9761 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9762
9763 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9764 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9765 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9766 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9767
9768       </div>
9769       <div class="tags">
9770
9771
9772         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>.
9773
9774
9775       </div>
9776     </div>
9777     <div class="padding"></div>
9778
9779     <div class="entry">
9780       <div class="title">
9781         <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>
9782       </div>
9783       <div class="date">
9784         27th July 2009
9785       </div>
9786       <div class="body">
9787         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9788 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9789 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9790 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9791 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9792 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9793 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9794
9795 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9796 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9797 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9798
9799       </div>
9800       <div class="tags">
9801
9802
9803         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>.
9804
9805
9806       </div>
9807     </div>
9808     <div class="padding"></div>
9809
9810     <div class="entry">
9811       <div class="title">
9812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9813       </div>
9814       <div class="date">
9815         22nd July 2009
9816       </div>
9817       <div class="body">
9818         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9819 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9820 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9821 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9822 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9823 the package up to date.</p>
9824
9825 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9826 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9827 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9828 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9829 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9830 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9831 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9832 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9833 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9834 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9835 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9836 working on the future release.</p>
9837
9838 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9839 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9840
9841       </div>
9842       <div class="tags">
9843
9844
9845         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>.
9846
9847
9848       </div>
9849     </div>
9850     <div class="padding"></div>
9851
9852     <div class="entry">
9853       <div class="title">
9854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9855       </div>
9856       <div class="date">
9857         24th June 2009
9858       </div>
9859       <div class="body">
9860         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9861 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9862 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9863 funded
9864 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9865 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9866 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9867 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9868 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9869 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9870
9871 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9872 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9873 boot:</p>
9874
9875 <ul>
9876
9877 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9878
9879 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9880    clock is in UTC.</li>
9881
9882 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9883    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9884    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9885
9886 </ul>
9887
9888 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9889 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9890 Villegas</a>.
9891
9892 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9893 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9894 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9895 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9896 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9897 using this.</p>
9898
9899 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9900 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9901 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9902 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9903 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9904 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9905 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9906
9907       </div>
9908       <div class="tags">
9909
9910
9911         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>.
9912
9913
9914       </div>
9915     </div>
9916     <div class="padding"></div>
9917
9918     <div class="entry">
9919       <div class="title">
9920         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="date">
9923         17th May 2009
9924       </div>
9925       <div class="body">
9926         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9927 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9928 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9929 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9930 dager siden kom
9931 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9932 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9933 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9934 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9935 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9936
9937 <blockquote>
9938 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9939 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9940 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9941 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9942 </blockquote>
9943
9944 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9945 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9946 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9947 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9948 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9949
9950 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9951 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9952 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9953
9954       </div>
9955       <div class="tags">
9956
9957
9958         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9959
9960
9961       </div>
9962     </div>
9963     <div class="padding"></div>
9964
9965     <div class="entry">
9966       <div class="title">
9967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
9968       </div>
9969       <div class="date">
9970          7th May 2009
9971       </div>
9972       <div class="body">
9973         <p>Kom over
9974 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9975 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9976 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9977 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9978 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9979 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9980 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9981
9982       </div>
9983       <div class="tags">
9984
9985
9986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9987
9988
9989       </div>
9990     </div>
9991     <div class="padding"></div>
9992
9993     <div class="entry">
9994       <div class="title">
9995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="date">
9998          2nd May 2009
9999       </div>
10000       <div class="body">
10001         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
10002 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
10003 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
10004 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
10005 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
10006 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
10007 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
10008 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
10009 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
10010 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
10011 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
10012 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
10013 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
10014 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
10015 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
10016 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
10017 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
10018 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
10019 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
10020 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
10021
10022 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
10023 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
10024 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
10025 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
10026 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
10027 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
10028 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
10029 betydelige.</p>
10030
10031       </div>
10032       <div class="tags">
10033
10034
10035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10036
10037
10038       </div>
10039     </div>
10040     <div class="padding"></div>
10041
10042     <div class="entry">
10043       <div class="title">
10044         <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>
10045       </div>
10046       <div class="date">
10047          2nd May 2009
10048       </div>
10049       <div class="body">
10050         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
10051 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
10052 do not yet know them.</p>
10053
10054 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
10055 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
10056 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
10057 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
10058 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
10059 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
10060 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
10061 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
10062 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
10063 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
10064 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
10065
10066 <p>The second one is
10067 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
10068 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
10069 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
10070 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
10071 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
10072 and the company behind it is running
10073 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
10074 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
10075 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
10076 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
10077 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
10078 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
10079 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
10080 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
10081
10082 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
10083 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
10084 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
10085 surrounded by today.</p>
10086
10087       </div>
10088       <div class="tags">
10089
10090
10091         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>.
10092
10093
10094       </div>
10095     </div>
10096     <div class="padding"></div>
10097
10098     <div class="entry">
10099       <div class="title">
10100         <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>
10101       </div>
10102       <div class="date">
10103         28th April 2009
10104       </div>
10105       <div class="body">
10106         <p>Julien Blache
10107 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
10108 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
10109 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
10110 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
10111 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
10112 properties.</p>
10113
10114       </div>
10115       <div class="tags">
10116
10117
10118         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>.
10119
10120
10121       </div>
10122     </div>
10123     <div class="padding"></div>
10124
10125     <div class="entry">
10126       <div class="title">
10127         <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>
10128       </div>
10129       <div class="date">
10130         30th March 2009
10131       </div>
10132       <div class="body">
10133         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
10134 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
10135 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
10136 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
10137 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
10138 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
10139 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
10140 application.</p>
10141
10142 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
10143 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
10144 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
10145 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
10146 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
10147 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
10148 blocked from doing so.</p>
10149
10150 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
10151 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
10152 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
10153 requirements change.</p>
10154
10155 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
10156 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
10157 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
10158
10159       </div>
10160       <div class="tags">
10161
10162
10163         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>.
10164
10165
10166       </div>
10167     </div>
10168     <div class="padding"></div>
10169
10170     <div class="entry">
10171       <div class="title">
10172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
10173       </div>
10174       <div class="date">
10175         29th March 2009
10176       </div>
10177       <div class="body">
10178         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
10179 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
10180 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
10181 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
10182 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
10183 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
10184 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
10185 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
10186 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
10187 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
10188 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
10189 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
10190 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
10191 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
10192 now. :)</p>
10193
10194       </div>
10195       <div class="tags">
10196
10197
10198         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>.
10199
10200
10201       </div>
10202     </div>
10203     <div class="padding"></div>
10204
10205     <div class="entry">
10206       <div class="title">
10207         <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>
10208       </div>
10209       <div class="date">
10210         29th March 2009
10211       </div>
10212       <div class="body">
10213         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
10214 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
10215 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
10216 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
10217 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
10218 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
10219
10220 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
10221 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
10222 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
10223 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
10224 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
10225 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
10226 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
10227 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
10228 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
10229 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
10230 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
10231 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
10232 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
10233
10234 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
10235 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
10236 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
10237 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
10238
10239 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
10240 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
10241
10242 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
10243 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
10244 new IETF work group?</p>
10245
10246       </div>
10247       <div class="tags">
10248
10249
10250         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>.
10251
10252
10253       </div>
10254     </div>
10255     <div class="padding"></div>
10256
10257     <div class="entry">
10258       <div class="title">
10259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
10260       </div>
10261       <div class="date">
10262         15th February 2009
10263       </div>
10264       <div class="body">
10265         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
10266 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
10267 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
10268 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
10269 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
10270 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
10271 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
10272 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
10273 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
10274 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
10275 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
10276 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
10277
10278       </div>
10279       <div class="tags">
10280
10281
10282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
10283
10284
10285       </div>
10286     </div>
10287     <div class="padding"></div>
10288
10289     <div class="entry">
10290       <div class="title">
10291         <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>
10292       </div>
10293       <div class="date">
10294          7th December 2008
10295       </div>
10296       <div class="body">
10297         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
10298 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
10299 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
10300 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
10301 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
10302 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
10303 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
10304 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
10305
10306 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
10307 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
10308 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
10309 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
10310 of these cards.</p>
10311
10312       </div>
10313       <div class="tags">
10314
10315
10316         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>.
10317
10318
10319       </div>
10320     </div>
10321     <div class="padding"></div>
10322
10323     <div class="entry">
10324       <div class="title">
10325         <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>
10326       </div>
10327       <div class="date">
10328         25th November 2008
10329       </div>
10330       <div class="body">
10331         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
10332 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
10333 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
10334 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
10335 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
10336 notes are available on
10337 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
10338 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
10339 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
10340 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
10341 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
10342 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
10343 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
10344 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
10345 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
10346
10347 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
10348 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
10349
10350       </div>
10351       <div class="tags">
10352
10353
10354         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>.
10355
10356
10357       </div>
10358     </div>
10359     <div class="padding"></div>
10360
10361     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
10362     <div id="sidebar">
10363
10364
10365
10366 <h2>Archive</h2>
10367 <ul>
10368
10369 <li>2016
10370 <ul>
10371
10372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
10373
10374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10375
10376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10377
10378 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
10379
10380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (4)</a></li>
10381
10382 </ul></li>
10383
10384 <li>2015
10385 <ul>
10386
10387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10388
10389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10390
10391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10392
10393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10394
10395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10396
10397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10398
10399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10400
10401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10402
10403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10404
10405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10406
10407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10408
10409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10410
10411 </ul></li>
10412
10413 <li>2014
10414 <ul>
10415
10416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10417
10418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10419
10420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10421
10422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10423
10424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10425
10426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10427
10428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10429
10430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10431
10432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10433
10434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10435
10436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10437
10438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10439
10440 </ul></li>
10441
10442 <li>2013
10443 <ul>
10444
10445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10446
10447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10448
10449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10450
10451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10452
10453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10454
10455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10456
10457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10458
10459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10460
10461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10462
10463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10464
10465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10466
10467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10468
10469 </ul></li>
10470
10471 <li>2012
10472 <ul>
10473
10474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10475
10476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10477
10478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10479
10480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10481
10482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10483
10484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10485
10486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10487
10488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10489
10490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10491
10492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10493
10494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10495
10496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10497
10498 </ul></li>
10499
10500 <li>2011
10501 <ul>
10502
10503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10504
10505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10506
10507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10508
10509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10510
10511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10512
10513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10514
10515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10516
10517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10518
10519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10520
10521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10522
10523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10524
10525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10526
10527 </ul></li>
10528
10529 <li>2010
10530 <ul>
10531
10532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10533
10534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10535
10536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10537
10538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10539
10540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10541
10542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10543
10544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10545
10546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10547
10548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10549
10550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10551
10552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10553
10554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10555
10556 </ul></li>
10557
10558 <li>2009
10559 <ul>
10560
10561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10562
10563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10564
10565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10566
10567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10568
10569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10570
10571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10572
10573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10574
10575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10576
10577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10578
10579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10580
10581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10582
10583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10584
10585 </ul></li>
10586
10587 <li>2008
10588 <ul>
10589
10590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10591
10592 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10593
10594 </ul></li>
10595
10596 </ul>
10597
10598
10599
10600 <h2>Tags</h2>
10601 <ul>
10602
10603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10604
10605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10606
10607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10608
10609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10610
10611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10612
10613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10614
10615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10616
10617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10618
10619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (127)</a></li>
10620
10621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (156)</a></li>
10622
10623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10624
10625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10626
10627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (21)</a></li>
10628
10629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10630
10631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (315)</a></li>
10632
10633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10634
10635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10636
10637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (26)</a></li>
10638
10639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10640
10641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
10642
10643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10644
10645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10646
10647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
10648
10649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10650
10651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10652
10653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10654
10655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10656
10657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10658
10659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10660
10661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (38)</a></li>
10662
10663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10664
10665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (275)</a></li>
10666
10667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (180)</a></li>
10668
10669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
10670
10671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10672
10673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (60)</a></li>
10674
10675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10676
10677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10678
10679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10680
10681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10682
10683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10684
10685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10686
10687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10688
10689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10690
10691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10692
10693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (46)</a></li>
10694
10695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10696
10697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10698
10699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
10700
10701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (4)</a></li>
10702
10703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10704
10705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10706
10707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10708
10709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10710
10711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10712
10713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (56)</a></li>
10714
10715  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10716
10717  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10718
10719 </ul>
10720
10721
10722     </div>
10723     <p style="text-align: right">
10724  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10725 </p>
10726
10727   </body>
10728 </html>