blog/archive/2012/12/12.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from December 2012</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from December 2012</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
  16 Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
  17 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
  18 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
  19 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
  20 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
  21 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
  22 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
  23 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
  24
  25 are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
  26 different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
  27 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
  28 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;
  29
  30 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  31 2004-05-27 Book Store
  32       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
  33       Liabilities:Visa
  34 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  35
  36 &lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
  37 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
  38 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
  39 Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
  40 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
  41 Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
  42 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
  43 Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
  44 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
  45 Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
  46 &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
  47 M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
  48 recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;
  49
  50 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
  51 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
  52 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
  53 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
  54 seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
  57 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
  58 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
  59 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
  60 play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
  61 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
  62 using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
  63 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
  64 for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
  65 </description>
  66         </item>
  67
  68         <item>
  69                 <title>61 kommuner lenker nå til FiksGataMi fra sine nettsider</title>
  70                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/61_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider.html</link>
  71                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/61_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider.html</guid>
  72                 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
  73                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For noen dager siden omfavnet nok en kommune NUUGs
  74 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;.  Med 61 kommuner
  75 som lenker til FiksGataMi fra sine hjemmesider er «markedsandelen» 14%
  76 (av 429 kommuner).  Siden
  77 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/59_kommuner_omfavner_n__FiksGataMi.html&quot;&gt;siste
  78 oppdatering i november&lt;/a&gt; har kommunene Re og Vågsøy kommet til og
  79 slår følge med kommunene Askim, Askøy, Audnedal, Aure, Balestrand,
  80 Bærum, Eide, Farsund, Flekkefjord, Folldal, Gran, Grue, Hadsel,
  81 Halden, Halsa, Hamar, Hobøl, Holtålen, Hægebostad, Høyanger,
  82 Kongsberg, Kristiansund, Kvinesdal, Kviteseid, Levanger, Lindesnes,
  83 Luster, Lyngdal, Løten, Mandal, Marnardal, Moss, Namsos, Nissedal,
  84 Nordreisa, Randaberg, Rindal, Sel, Sirdal, Skiptvet, Sortland,
  85 Spydeberg, Stange, Stjørdal, Stord, Søgne, Sør-Odal, Tolga, Trysil,
  86 Tynset, Tysvær, Ullensvang Herad, Utsira, Vennesla, Verdal, Vågan,
  87 Vågå, Våler og Åseral.  Oppdatert liste er tilgjengelig fra
  88 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/fiksgatami/positivemottakere&quot;&gt;NUUGs
  89 wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  Kartet er dog ikke oppdatert med de siste kommunene.&lt;/p&gt;
  90
  91 &lt;p&gt;Kanskje du bør høre med din kommune om de vil bli mer aktive
  92 brukere av FiksGataMi?  Se
  93 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/40_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider___gj_r_din_.html&quot;&gt;en
  94 tidligere bloggpost&lt;/a&gt; med tips om hvordan det kan gjøres.&lt;/p&gt;
  95
  96 &lt;p&gt;I snitt rapporteres det nå via FiksGataMi ca. 60 meldinger fra
  97 innbyggerne i uka om feil på offentlig infrastruktur.&lt;/p&gt;
  98 </description>
  99         </item>
 100
 101         <item>
 102                 <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
 103                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>
 104                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
 105                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 106                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
 107 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
 108 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
 109 administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
 110 I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
 111 an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
 112 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
 113 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
 114 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
 115 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
 116 Python.&lt;/p&gt;
 117
 118 &lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
 119 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
 120 client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
 121 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
 122 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
 123 simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;
 124
 125 &lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
 126 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
 127 user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;
 128
 129 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 130 #!/usr/bin/env python
 131 import getpass
 132 import xmlrpclib
 133 server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
 134 username = getpass.getuser()
 135 password = getpass.getpass()
 136 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
 137 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
 138 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
 139 print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
 140 result = server.logout(sessionid)
 141 print result
 142 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 143
 144 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
 145 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
 146 </description>
 147         </item>
 148
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