blog/tags/english/english.rss

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged english</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged english</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
  15 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
  16 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
  17 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
  18 the project:
  19
  20 &lt;ol&gt;
  21
  22 &lt;li&gt;It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
  23   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
  24   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;BTS report #700257&lt;/a&gt;.
  25   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
  26   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?&lt;/li&gt;
  27
  28 &lt;li&gt;It is not possible to &quot;mass import&quot; user lists in Gosa, neither
  29   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
  30   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
  31   This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;BTS report
  32   #698840&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;/ol&gt;
  35
  36 &lt;p&gt;If you can help us, please join us on IRC
  37 (&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
  38 irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;) and provide patches via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
  39 </description>
  40         </item>
  41
  42         <item>
  43                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</title>
  44                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</link>
  45                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</guid>
  46                 <pubDate>Tue, 4 Jun 2013 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  47                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last English
  48 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
  49 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
  50 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
  51 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
  52 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.&lt;/p&gt;
  53
  54 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;p&gt;I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
  57 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
  58 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
  59 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.&lt;/p&gt;
  60
  61 &lt;p&gt;I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
  62 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
  63 packaging, publicity and translation.&lt;/p&gt;
  64
  65 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
  66 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  67
  68 &lt;p&gt;I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
  69 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals&quot;&gt;the
  70 Debian Edu manual&lt;/a&gt; for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
  71 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
  72 manual.
  73
  74 &lt;p&gt;I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
  75 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
  76 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
  77 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.&lt;/p&gt;
  78
  79 &lt;p&gt;What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
  80 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
  81 by &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa²&lt;/a&gt;.  What pleased
  82 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
  83 there were many &quot;traditional&quot; educative software to learn languages,
  84 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
  85 artistic skills with music (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ardour.org/&quot;&gt;Ardour&lt;/a&gt;,
  86 &lt;a href=&quot;http://audacity.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Audacity&lt;/a&gt;) and
  87 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
  88 &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Stopmotion&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
  89
  90 &lt;p&gt;I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
  91 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt;.
  92 Unfortunately, I don&#39;t much time to get more involved in this
  93 beautiful project.&lt;/p&gt;
  94
  95 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  96 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  97
  98 &lt;p&gt;For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
  99 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
 100 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.&lt;/p&gt;
 101
 102 &lt;p&gt;I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
 103 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
 104 of educational free software.&lt;/p&gt;
 105
 106 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
 107 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 108
 109 &lt;p&gt;Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
 110 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
 111 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
 112 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
 113 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.&lt;/p&gt;
 114
 115 &lt;p&gt;One can find support from a company by looking at
 116 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp&quot;&gt;the
 117 wiki dokumentation&lt;/a&gt;, where some countries already have a number of
 118 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
 119 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
 120 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
 121 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
 122 support for Debian Edu as well.&lt;/p&gt;
 123
 124 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 125
 126 &lt;p&gt;I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
 127 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
 128 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
 129 also using the mathematical software
 130 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎&quot;&gt;Scilab&lt;/a&gt; and
 131 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎&quot;&gt;Sage&lt;/a&gt; (built from
 132 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
 133
 134 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
 135 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
 136 statistics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 137
 138 &lt;p&gt;I do not have any &quot;nice&quot; recommendations for statistics. At our
 139 university, we use both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/‎&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt; and
 140 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
 141 geometry, there are nice programs:&lt;/p&gt;
 142
 143 &lt;ul&gt;
 144
 145 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drgeo.eu/&quot;&gt;drgeo&lt;/a&gt; and
 146 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎&quot;&gt;kig&lt;/a&gt; to do
 147 constructions in planar geometry
 148
 149 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html&quot;&gt;kali&lt;/a&gt;
 150 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
 151 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.&lt;/li&gt;
 152
 153 &lt;/ul&gt;
 154
 155 &lt;p&gt;I like also
 156 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor&quot;&gt;cantor&lt;/a&gt;, which
 157 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
 158 &lt;a href=&quot;http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎&quot;&gt;Octave&lt;/a&gt;, etc...&lt;/p&gt;
 159
 160 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 161 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 162
 163 &lt;p&gt;My suggestions would be to&lt;/p&gt;
 164
 165 &lt;ul&gt;
 166
 167 &lt;li&gt;advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.&lt;/li&gt;
 168
 169 &lt;li&gt;communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
 170     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
 171     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.&lt;/li&gt;
 172
 173 &lt;li&gt;advertise the living and strong community around the project.&lt;/li&gt;
 174
 175 &lt;li&gt;show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
 176     system.&lt;/li&gt;
 177
 178 &lt;/ul&gt;
 179 </description>
 180         </item>
 181
 182         <item>
 183                 <title>Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</title>
 184                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</link>
 185                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</guid>
 186                 <pubDate>Sat, 1 Jun 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
 187                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
 188 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, there are quite a lot of educational software.
 189 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
 190 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
 191 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
 192 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
 193 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
 194 program.&lt;/p&gt;
 195
 196 &lt;!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk &#39;{print $2}&#39;); do   echo; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;$f&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;;   (     for p in $(debtags search --names &quot;use::learning &amp;&amp; interface::x11 &amp;&amp; role::program &amp;&amp; $f&quot;); do img=&quot;&lt;img src=&#39;http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p&#39; alt=&#39;$p&#39;&gt;&quot;; if dpkg -s $p &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1; then           echo &quot;&lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p&#39;&gt;$img&lt;/a&gt;&quot;; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; done --&gt;
 197
 198 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::arts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 199 &lt;p&gt;
 200 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png&#39; alt=&#39;audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 201 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 202 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png&#39; alt=&#39;denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 203 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png&#39; alt=&#39;freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 204 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 205 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png&#39; alt=&#39;gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 206 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png&#39; alt=&#39;hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 207 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png&#39; alt=&#39;lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 208 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png&#39; alt=&#39;lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 209 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png&#39; alt=&#39;rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 210 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png&#39; alt=&#39;scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 211 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png&#39; alt=&#39;solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 212 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png&#39; alt=&#39;stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 213 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 214 &lt;/p&gt;
 215
 216 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::astronomy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 217 &lt;p&gt;
 218 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png&#39; alt=&#39;celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 219 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png&#39; alt=&#39;gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 220 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png&#39; alt=&#39;kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 221 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=planets&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png&#39; alt=&#39;planets&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 222 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png&#39; alt=&#39;stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 223 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 224 &lt;/p&gt;
 225
 226 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::biology:structural&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 227 &lt;p&gt;
 228 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 229 &lt;/p&gt;
 230
 231 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::chemistry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 232 &lt;p&gt;
 233 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png&#39; alt=&#39;atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 234 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png&#39; alt=&#39;chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 235 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png&#39; alt=&#39;easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 236 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 237 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png&#39; alt=&#39;gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 238 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png&#39; alt=&#39;ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 239 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png&#39; alt=&#39;gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 240 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 241 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 242 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=viewmol&#39;&gt;[viewmol]&lt;/a&gt;
 243 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png&#39; alt=&#39;xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 244 &lt;/p&gt;
 245
 246 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::electronics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 247 &lt;p&gt;
 248 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 249 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpsim&#39;&gt;[gpsim]&lt;/a&gt;
 250 &lt;/p&gt;
 251
 252 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::geography&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 253 &lt;p&gt;
 254 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png&#39; alt=&#39;kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 255 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=marble&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png&#39; alt=&#39;marble&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 256 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 257 &lt;/p&gt;
 258
 259 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::linguistics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 260 &lt;p&gt;
 261 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 262 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png&#39; alt=&#39;kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 263 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png&#39; alt=&#39;khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 264 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png&#39; alt=&#39;klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 265 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=parley&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png&#39; alt=&#39;parley&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 266 &lt;/p&gt;
 267
 268 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 269 &lt;p&gt;
 270 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 271 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png&#39; alt=&#39;drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 272 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 273 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 274 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geomview&#39;&gt;[geomview]&lt;/a&gt;
 275 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=grace&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png&#39; alt=&#39;grace&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 276 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 277 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 278 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 279 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png&#39; alt=&#39;kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 280 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kig&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png&#39; alt=&#39;kig&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 281 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png&#39; alt=&#39;kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 282 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png&#39; alt=&#39;mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 283 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png&#39; alt=&#39;rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 284 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 285 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 286 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png&#39; alt=&#39;xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 287 &lt;/p&gt;
 288
 289 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::physics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 290 &lt;p&gt;
 291 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 292 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=step&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png&#39; alt=&#39;step&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 293 &lt;/p&gt;
 294
 295 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::TODO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 296 &lt;p&gt;
 297 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png&#39; alt=&#39;blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 298 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png&#39; alt=&#39;cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 299 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 300 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 301 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 302 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 303 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png&#39; alt=&#39;gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 304 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png&#39; alt=&#39;ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 305 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png&#39; alt=&#39;librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 306 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
 307 &lt;/p&gt;
 308
 309 &lt;p&gt;In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
 310 &lt;a href=&quot;http://screenshot.debian.net&quot;&gt;screenshot.debian.net&lt;/a&gt;.  If
 311 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
 312 know on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu
 313 on irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;, or our
 314 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;mailing list
 315 debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 316 </description>
 317         </item>
 318
 319         <item>
 320                 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
 321                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
 322                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
 323                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 324                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
 325 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
 326 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
 327 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;.  I found a solution, but am horrified
 328 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
 329 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
 330
 331 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
 332 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
 333 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
 334 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
 335 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
 336
 337 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
 338 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
 339 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
 340 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
 341 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
 342 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
 343 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
 344 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
 345 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
 346
 347 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
 348 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
 349 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
 350 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
 351 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
 352 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
 353 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
 354 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
 355
 356 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
 357 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
 358 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
 359 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
 360 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
 361
 362 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
 363 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
 364 </description>
 365         </item>
 366
 367         <item>
 368                 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
 369                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
 370                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
 371                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 372                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
 373 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
 374 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
 375 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
 376 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
 377 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
 378
 379 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
 380 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
 381 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
 382 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
 383 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
 384 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
 385 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
 386 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
 387 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
 388 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
 389
 390 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
 391 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
 392 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
 393 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
 394 page.  If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
 395 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
 396
 397 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
 398 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
 399 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
 400 </description>
 401         </item>
 402
 403         <item>
 404                 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
 405                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
 406                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
 407                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
 408                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
 409 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
 410 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
 411 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
 412 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
 413 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
 414 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
 415 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
 416 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
 417 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
 418
 419 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
 420 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
 421 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn&#39;t very
 422 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
 423 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
 424
 425 &lt;p&gt;The script,
 426 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
 427 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
 428 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
 429 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
 430
 431 &lt;ol&gt;
 432
 433 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
 434 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
 435 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
 436     our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
 437 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
 438     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
 439     according to the profile specified in the config above,
 440     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
 441 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
 442     that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
 443 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
 444
 445 &lt;/ol&gt;
 446
 447 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
 448 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
 449 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
 450 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
 451
 452 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
 453 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
 454 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
 455 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
 456 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
 457 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
 458
 459 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
 460 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
 461 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
 462
 463 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 464 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
 465 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
 466 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 467
 468 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
 469 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
 470 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
 471 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
 472 </description>
 473         </item>
 474
 475         <item>
 476                 <title>Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
 477                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
 478                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
 479                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 480                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 481 project&lt;/a&gt; is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
 482 release today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
 483
 484 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
 485 2013-05-14&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 486
 487 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
 488 alpha1, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; with
 489 codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 490
 491 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 492
 493 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
 494 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 495 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
 496 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 497 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 498 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 499 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
 500 other machines can be installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
 501
 502 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
 503 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
 504 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
 505
 506 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 507 &lt;ul&gt;
 508   &lt;li&gt;Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
 509     default.&lt;/li&gt;
 510   &lt;li&gt;Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.&lt;/li&gt;
 511   &lt;li&gt;Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.&lt;/li&gt;
 512   &lt;li&gt;Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
 513     ibus-anthy.&lt;/li&gt;
 514 &lt;/ul&gt;
 515
 516 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 517 &lt;ul&gt;
 518
 519   &lt;li&gt;Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
 520     reliability improvements.&lt;/li&gt;
 521   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
 522     of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706434&quot;&gt;706434&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
 523   &lt;li&gt;Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
 524     problems.&lt;/li&gt;
 525   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
 526     direct:// URL.&lt;/li&gt;
 527   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.&lt;/li&gt;
 528   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.&lt;/li&gt;
 529   &lt;li&gt;Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.&lt;/li&gt;
 530   &lt;li&gt;Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
 531     servers, to make room for all the software installed.&lt;/li&gt;
 532   &lt;li&gt;Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
 533     log in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706753&quot;&gt;706753&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
 534 &lt;/ul&gt;
 535
 536 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 537 &lt;ul&gt;
 538
 539   &lt;li&gt;IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
 540     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/705900&quot;&gt;705900&lt;/a&gt;).  Only install
 541     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.&lt;/li&gt;
 542   &lt;li&gt;DVD images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
 543   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
 544     available yet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;698840&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
 545   &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).&lt;/li&gt;
 546   &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.&lt;/li&gt;
 547   &lt;li&gt;LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
 548     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.&lt;/li&gt;
 549   &lt;li&gt;Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
 550     password submission problem
 551     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;700257&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
 552
 553 &lt;/ul&gt;
 554
 555 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 556
 557 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 558 &lt;ul&gt;
 559
 560   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 561   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 562   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
 563
 564 &lt;/ul&gt;
 565
 566 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b&lt;/p&gt;
 567
 568 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c&lt;/p&gt;
 569
 570 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 571
 572 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 573 </description>
 574         </item>
 575
 576         <item>
 577                 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
 578                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
 579                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
 580                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 581                 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
 582 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
 583 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
 584 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 585 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
 586 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 587 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
 588 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 589 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 590 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 591 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
 592 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 593 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
 594
 595 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
 596 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 597 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 598 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 599 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 600 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 601 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 602 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 603 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 604 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 605 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 606 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 607
 608 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 609 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 610 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
 611
 612 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 613 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 614 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
 615 </description>
 616         </item>
 617
 618         <item>
 619                 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
 620                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
 621                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
 622                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 623                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 624 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
 625 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 626 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 627 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
 628
 629 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 630 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 631 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
 632 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
 633 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 634 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
 635 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
 636 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 637 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 638 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 639 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
 640
 641 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 642 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 643 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
 644 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
 645 follow.&lt;p&gt;
 646 </description>
 647         </item>
 648
 649         <item>
 650                 <title>First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
 651                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
 652                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
 653                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 654                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
 655 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
 656 announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
 657
 658 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
 659 2013-04-26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 660
 661 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
 662 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 663
 664 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 665
 666 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
 667 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 668 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 669 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
 670 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 671 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 672 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 673 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
 674 installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
 675
 676 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
 677 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
 678 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
 679
 680 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 681
 682 &lt;ul&gt;
 683 &lt;li&gt;Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
 684   &lt;ul&gt;
 685      &lt;li&gt;Linux kernel 3.2.x&lt;/li&gt;
 686      &lt;li&gt;Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
 687          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
 688          manual.)&lt;/li&gt;
 689      &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR&lt;/li&gt;
 690      &lt;li&gt;LibreOffice 3.5.4&lt;/li&gt;
 691      &lt;li&gt;LTSP 5.4.2&lt;/li&gt;
 692      &lt;li&gt;GOsa 2.7.4&lt;/li&gt;
 693      &lt;li&gt;CUPS print system 1.5.3&lt;/li&gt;
 694      &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01&lt;/li&gt;
 695      &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 12.04&lt;/li&gt;
 696      &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.8.2&lt;/li&gt;
 697      &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1&lt;/li&gt;
 698      &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3&lt;/li&gt;
 699      &lt;li&gt;Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6&lt;/li&gt;
 700      &lt;li&gt;New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
 701          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation
 702          manual&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/li&gt;
 703      &lt;li&gt;Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
 704          installation.&lt;/li&gt;
 705      &lt;li&gt;More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
 706          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes&quot;&gt;release notes&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
 707   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 708 &lt;/ul&gt;
 709
 710 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 711 &lt;ul&gt;
 712 &lt;li&gt;The (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt;) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
 713     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
 714     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.&lt;/li&gt;
 715 &lt;/ul&gt;
 716
 717 &lt;p&gt;&lt;Strong&gt;LDAP related changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 718 &lt;ul&gt;
 719 &lt;li&gt;Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
 720     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
 721     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.&lt;/li&gt;
 722 &lt;/ul&gt;
 723
 724 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 725 &lt;ul&gt;
 726 &lt;li&gt;LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
 727     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
 728     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.&lt;li&gt;
 729 &lt;li&gt;GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
 730     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
 731     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.&lt;/li&gt;
 732 &lt;/ul&gt;
 733
 734 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regressions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 735 &lt;ul&gt;
 736 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
 737     yet.&lt;/li&gt;
 738 &lt;/ul&gt;
 739
 740 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No updated artwork&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 741
 742 &lt;ul&gt;
 743 &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
 744     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
 745     had for our Squeeze based release.&lt;/li&gt;
 746 &lt;/ul&gt;
 747
 748 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 749
 750 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
 751 &lt;ul&gt;
 752 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 753 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 754 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/li&gt;
 755 &lt;/ul&gt;
 756
 757 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c&lt;/p&gt;
 758
 759 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2&lt;/p&gt;
 760
 761 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 762
 763 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 764 </description>
 765         </item>
 766
 767         <item>
 768                 <title>First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</title>
 769                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</link>
 770                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</guid>
 771                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 772                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This years first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux /
 773 Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
 774 Details about the gathering can be found
 775 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim&quot;&gt;on
 776 the FRiSK wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
 777 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
 778 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
 779 weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
 780
 781 &lt;p&gt;The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
 782 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
 783 Edu release.&lt;/p&gt;
 784
 785 &lt;p&gt;See you on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,&lt;/a&gt; then?&lt;/p&gt;
 786 </description>
 787         </item>
 788
 789         <item>
 790                 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
 791                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
 792                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
 793                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 794                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
 795 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 796 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 797 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
 798
 799 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 800 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 801 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 802 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 803 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 804 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 805 </description>
 806         </item>
 807
 808         <item>
 809                 <title>Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</title>
 810                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</link>
 811                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</guid>
 812                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
 813                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
 814 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
 815 font you use when printing.&lt;/p&gt;
 816
 817 &lt;p&gt;Three years ago,
 818 &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/&quot;&gt;Ars
 819 Technica&lt;/a&gt; reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
 820 changed their default front from
 821 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial&quot;&gt;Arial&lt;/a&gt; to
 822 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic&quot;&gt;Century
 823 Gothic&lt;/a&gt; to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
 824 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
 825 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
 826 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
 827 prints.&lt;/p&gt;
 828
 829 &lt;p&gt;But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
 830 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
 831 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
 832 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097&quot;&gt;a report from
 833 TwinCities.com&lt;/a&gt;, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
 834 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
 835 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
 836 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
 837 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
 838 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
 839 depend on the documents printed.&lt;/p&gt;
 840
 841 &lt;p&gt;But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
 842 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
 843 and save some money in the process.&lt;/p&gt;
 844
 845 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
 846 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
 847 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font&quot;&gt;service to calculate the
 848 difference between font pairs&lt;/a&gt;.  They also
 849 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---&quot;&gt;recommend
 850 which fonts to use&lt;/a&gt; to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
 851 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
 852 &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/&quot;&gt;listing
 853 the fonts they recommend&lt;/a&gt;, with Centory Gothic at the top.&lt;/p&gt;
 854 </description>
 855         </item>
 856
 857         <item>
 858                 <title>Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</title>
 859                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</link>
 860                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</guid>
 861                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 862                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, during a discussion in
 863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efn.no/&quot;&gt;EFN&lt;/a&gt; about interesting books to read
 864 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
 865 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
 866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/&quot;&gt;Tore Åge Bringsværd&lt;/a&gt;
 867 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
 868 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
 869 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
 870 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
 871 short story using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;Creative
 872 Commons&lt;/a&gt; license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
 873 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;
 874
 875 &lt;p&gt;As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
 876 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
 877 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
 878 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; processing framework to
 879 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
 880 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
 881 distribution of choice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;, so
 882 all I had to do was to use the
 883 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;dblatex&lt;/a&gt;,
 884 &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README&quot;&gt;dbtoepub&lt;/a&gt;
 885 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/&quot;&gt;xmlto&lt;/a&gt; tools to do the
 886 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
 887 xsltproc/fop (aka
 888 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets&quot;&gt;docbook-xsl&lt;/a&gt;),
 889 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
 890 nicer &amp;lt;variablelist&amp;gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
 891 technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;
 892
 893 &lt;p&gt;There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
 894 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
 895 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
 896 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
 897 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
 898 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;
 899
 900 &lt;p&gt;I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
 901 single star in it, ie &amp;lt;para&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/para&amp;gt;, but it made sure a
 902 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
 903 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
 904 preprocessor directive &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;, mapping to &quot;&amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;&quot;
 905 for HTML and &quot;&amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;fo:leader
 906 leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;&quot;
 907 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
 908 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 909
 910 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 911 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 912 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 913   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
 914     &amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;
 915   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 916 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 917 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 918
 919 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 920
 921 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 922 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 923 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 924   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
 925     &amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;
 926       &amp;lt;fo:leader leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;
 927     &amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;
 928   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 929 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 930 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 931
 932 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I came across the &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt; tag, which seem to be
 933 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;
 934 with &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/bridgehead&amp;gt;.  It isn&#39;t centred, but we
 935 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn&#39;t
 936 enough.&lt;/p&gt;
 937
 938 &lt;p&gt;I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
 939 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
 940 directive &amp;lt;?linebreak?&amp;gt;, mapping to &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt; in HTML, and
 941 &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
 942 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
 943 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 944
 945 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 946 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 947 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
 948   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
 949     &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;
 950   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 951 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 952 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 953
 954 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 955
 956 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 957 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
 958 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;
 959   xmlns:fo=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format&quot;&amp;gt;
 960   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
 961     &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt;
 962   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
 963 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
 964 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 965
 966 &lt;p&gt;One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
 967 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
 968 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
 969 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
 970 page.&lt;/p&gt;
 971
 972 &lt;p&gt;If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
 973 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sickel/kodemus&quot;&gt;source repository at
 974 github&lt;/a&gt;
 975 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/EFN/kodemus&quot;&gt;future/new/official
 976 repository&lt;/a&gt;).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
 977 days.&lt;/p&gt;
 978 </description>
 979         </item>
 980
 981         <item>
 982                 <title>Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</title>
 983                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</link>
 984                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</guid>
 985                 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
 986                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via
 987 &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
 988 I just discovered that &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcwizz.net/&quot;&gt;Pcwizz&lt;/a&gt; have
 989 done a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot;&gt;video
 990 review&lt;/a&gt; on Youtube of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
 991 / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
 992 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
 993 a few programs and his view of our distribution.&lt;/p&gt;
 994
 995 &lt;p&gt;There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
 996 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:&lt;/p&gt;
 997
 998 &lt;blockquote&gt;
 999 &quot;Basically everything you ever need in a school environment.&quot;
1000 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1001
1002 &lt;p&gt;And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:&lt;/p&gt;
1003
1004 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1005 &quot;So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
1006 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
1007 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
1008 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
1009 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network.&quot;
1010 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1011
1012 &lt;p&gt;To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
1013 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
1014 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
1015 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1016
1017 &lt;p&gt;While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
1018 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
1019
1020 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1021 &quot;[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
1022 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
1023 actually don&#39;t need in the education distribution, but have just been
1024 included because it isn&#39;t stripped out for some reason.&quot;
1025 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1026
1027 &lt;p&gt;I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
1028 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
1029 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries&quot;&gt;one
1030 consistent menu system&lt;/a&gt; instead of two incomplete and partly
1031 inconsistent menu systems.&lt;/p&gt;
1032
1033 &lt;p&gt;The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
1034 embedding:&lt;/p&gt;
1035
1036 &lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
1037 </description>
1038         </item>
1039
1040         <item>
1041                 <title>First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</title>
1042                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</link>
1043                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</guid>
1044                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 Mar 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1045                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
1046 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
1047 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
1048 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
1049 initial release 2012-03-11&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the
1050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;release
1051 announcement email from Holger&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
1052
1053 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
1054
1055 &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
1056 Edu 6.0.7+r1 (&quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;
1057
1058 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
1059 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
1060 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
1061 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
1062 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&lt;/a&gt;
1063 for more information on &quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
1064
1065 &lt;p&gt;Images are available for download at
1066 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1067
1068 &lt;p&gt;md5sums:
1069 &lt;br&gt;1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
1070 &lt;br&gt;a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
1071 &lt;br&gt;ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
1072
1073 &lt;p&gt;sha1sums:
1074 &lt;br&gt;a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
1075 &lt;br&gt;9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
1076 &lt;br&gt;43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
1077
1078 &lt;p&gt;These images are suitable for amd64+i386.&lt;/p&gt;
1079
1080 &lt;p&gt;Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename &quot;Squeeze&quot;, released
1081 2013-03-03:&lt;/p&gt;
1082
1083 &lt;ul&gt;
1084   &lt;li&gt;sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
1085   &lt;ul&gt;
1086         &lt;li&gt;Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient&lt;/li&gt;
1087         &lt;li&gt;Comply with 3.X kernel&lt;/li&gt;
1088   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1089   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
1090   &lt;ul&gt;
1091         &lt;li&gt;Minor updates from the wiki&lt;/li&gt;
1092         &lt;li&gt;Danish translation now complete&lt;/li&gt;
1093   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1094   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
1095      &lt;ul&gt;
1096         &lt;li&gt;Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880&lt;/li&gt;
1097         &lt;li&gt;Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.&lt;/li&gt;
1098         &lt;li&gt;Correct Kerberos user policy: don&#39;t expire password after 2 days.
1099                 Closes: #664596&lt;/li&gt;
1100         &lt;li&gt;Handle &#39;#&#39; characters in the root or first users password.
1101                 Closes: #664976&lt;/li&gt;
1102         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-sync:
1103            &lt;ul&gt;
1104                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t fail if password contains &quot;&lt;/li&gt;
1105                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t disclose new password string in syslog&lt;/li&gt;
1106            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1107         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-create:
1108            &lt;ul&gt;
1109                 &lt;li&gt;Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes&lt;/li&gt;
1110                 &lt;li&gt;Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²&lt;/li&gt;
1111                 &lt;li&gt;gosa-netgroups plugin: don&#39;t erase entries of attribute type
1112                          &quot;memberNisNetgroup&quot;. Closes: #687256&lt;/li&gt;
1113                 &lt;li&gt;First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users&lt;/li&gt;
1114            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1115         &lt;li&gt;Add Danish web page&lt;/li&gt;
1116     &lt;/ul&gt;
1117   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
1118     &lt;ul&gt;
1119         &lt;li&gt;Improve preseeding support and documentation&lt;/li&gt;
1120     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1121 &lt;/ul&gt;
1122
1123 &lt;p&gt;End-user documentation in English is available at
1124 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&lt;/a&gt;
1125 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
1126 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)&lt;/p&gt;
1127
1128 &lt;p&gt;If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
1129 mailinglist
1130 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;!
1131 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
1132
1133 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1134 </description>
1135         </item>
1136
1137         <item>
1138                 <title>Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</title>
1139                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</link>
1140                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</guid>
1141                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Mar 2013 07:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
1142                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
1143 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
1144 support using
1145 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
1146 open standards&lt;/a&gt;?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
1147 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
1148 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
1149 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikanalen.no/&quot;&gt;Frikanalen&lt;/a&gt; have been building a
1150 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
1151 using the GNU LGPL, and
1152 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/Frikanalen&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1153
1154 &lt;p&gt;The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
1155 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
1156 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
1157 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
1158 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
1159 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1160
1161 &lt;p&gt;There are several parts to this web based solution.  I&#39;ll mention
1162 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
1163 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
1164 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
1165 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
1166 &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.frikanalen.tv/&quot;&gt;beta.frikanalen.tv&lt;/a&gt;.  The
1167 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
1168 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
1169 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casparcg.com/&quot;&gt;CasparCG from SVT&lt;/a&gt; and
1170 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mltframework.org/&quot;&gt;Media Lovin&#39; Toolkit&lt;/a&gt;.  Video
1171 signal distribution is handled using
1172 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ob-encoder.com/&quot;&gt;Open Broadcast Encoder&lt;/a&gt;.  The
1173 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
1174 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
1175 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
1176 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
1177 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
1178 them up a bit more first.&lt;/p&gt;
1179
1180 &lt;p&gt;The development is coordinated on the
1181 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen&quot;&gt;#frikanalen IRC
1182 channel&lt;/a&gt; (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
1183 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen&quot;&gt;the
1184 frikanalen mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
1185 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
1186 development.&lt;/p&gt;
1187 </description>
1188         </item>
1189
1190         <item>
1191                 <title>Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</title>
1192                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</link>
1193                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</guid>
1194                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1195                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stallman.org/&quot;&gt;Richard Stallman&lt;/a&gt;,
1196 founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/&quot;&gt;Free Software Foundation&lt;/a&gt;,
1197 is giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;a
1198 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00&lt;/a&gt;.  The event is public
1199 and organised by &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)&lt;/a&gt;
1200 (where I am the chair of the board) and
1201 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprog.no/&quot;&gt;The Norwegian Open Source Competence
1202 Center&lt;/a&gt;.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
1203 GNU», with this description:
1204
1205 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1206 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users&#39; freedom to
1207 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
1208 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
1209 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
1210 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1211
1212 &lt;p&gt;The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
1213 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
1214 am really curious how many will show up.  See
1215 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;the event
1216 page&lt;/a&gt; for the location details.&lt;/p&gt;
1217 </description>
1218         </item>
1219
1220         <item>
1221                 <title>Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</title>
1222                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</link>
1223                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</guid>
1224                 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1225                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
1226 now a great source of free maps available from
1227 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html&quot;&gt;Frikart&lt;/a&gt;.  To
1228 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
1229 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
1230 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
1231 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
1232 &quot;Trails - overlay map&quot; and &quot;Cross country - overlay map&quot; (see the web
1233 page for descriptions).&lt;/p&gt;
1234
1235 &lt;p&gt;The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
1236 map you can just edit the
1237 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; map source
1238 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1239 </description>
1240         </item>
1241
1242         <item>
1243                 <title>&quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</title>
1244                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</link>
1245                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</guid>
1246                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
1247                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
1248 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura&quot;&gt;solution promoted
1249 by the Norwegian government&lt;/a&gt; require that invoices are sent through
1250 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
1251 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
1252 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
1253 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
1254 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
1255 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
1256 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
1257 &quot;electronic&quot; information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
1258 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
1259 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
1260 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
1261 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard&quot;&gt;the vCard format&lt;/a&gt;, as
1262 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.&lt;/p&gt;
1263
1264 &lt;p&gt;The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
1265 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
1266 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
1267 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;ask
1268 for donations to the Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; and thus have bank account
1269 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
1270 fields:&lt;/p&gt;
1271
1272 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1273 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
1274 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
1275 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
1276 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
1277 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
1278 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
1279 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
1280 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1281
1282 &lt;p&gt;The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
1283 answer regarding
1284 &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file&quot;&gt;how
1285 to put bank account information into a vCard&lt;/a&gt;.  For payments in
1286 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
1287 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.&lt;/p&gt;
1288
1289 &lt;p&gt;The complete vCard could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1290
1291 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1292 BEGIN:VCARD
1293 VERSION:2.1
1294 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
1295 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
1296 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
1297 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
1298 REV:20130212T095000Z
1299 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
1300 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
1301 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
1302 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
1303 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
1304 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
1305 END:VCARD
1306 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1307
1308 &lt;p&gt;The resulting QR code created using
1309 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/&quot;&gt;qrencode&lt;/a&gt; would look
1310 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
1311 phone, or for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;zbar
1312 bar code reader&lt;/a&gt; and feed right into the approval and accounting
1313 system.&lt;/p&gt;
1314
1315 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1316
1317 &lt;p&gt;The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
1318 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
1319 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
1320 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
1321
1322 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-02-12 11:30&lt;/strong&gt;: Added KID to the proposal
1323 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.&lt;/p&gt;
1324 </description>
1325         </item>
1326
1327         <item>
1328                 <title>Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</title>
1329                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</link>
1330                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</guid>
1331                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
1332                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;left&quot; style=&quot;margin-right:25px;&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1333
1334 &lt;p&gt;With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
1335 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
1336 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
1337 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
1338 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
1339 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
1340 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
1341 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
1342 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
1343 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
1344 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.&lt;/p&gt;
1345
1346 &lt;p&gt;But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
1347 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
1348 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick&quot;&gt;Tellstick&lt;/a&gt; and RF
1349 switches at the local &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clasohlson.com/&quot;&gt;Clas
1350 Ohlson&lt;/a&gt; shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
1351 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
1352 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
1353 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
1354 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
1355 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net&quot;&gt;Tellstick
1356 Net&lt;/a&gt; to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
1357 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
1358 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
1359 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
1360 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
1361 ones own
1362 &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware&quot;&gt;firmware
1363 with local access&lt;/A&gt; instead of being controlled by a Swedish
1364 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
1365 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
1366 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
1367 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
1368 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
1369 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
1370 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
1371 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
1372 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
1373
1374 &lt;p&gt;We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
1375 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
1376 &quot;morning light&quot; was turned on and signalled that the morning had
1377 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
1378 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
1379 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
1380
1381 &lt;p&gt;A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
1382 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
1383 can also delay it if we want to.&lt;/p&gt;
1384 </description>
1385         </item>
1386
1387         <item>
1388                 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
1389                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
1390                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
1391                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1392                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
1393 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
1394 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
1395 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
1396 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1397 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
1398 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1399 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
1400
1401 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1402 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1403 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1404 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1405 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
1406 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1407 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
1408 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
1409
1410 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1411 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1412 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
1413 #696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1414 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1415
1416 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1417 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1418 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1419 </description>
1420         </item>
1421
1422         <item>
1423                 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
1424                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
1425                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
1426                 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1427                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
1428 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
1429 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1430 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1431 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
1432 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
1433 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1434 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1435 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1436 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
1437 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1438 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
1439 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
1440 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
1441
1442 &lt;pre&gt;
1443 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1444 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
1445 &lt;/pre&gt;
1446
1447 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
1448 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1449 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1450 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1451
1452 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1453 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
1454 stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1455 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1456 word.&lt;/p&gt;
1457
1458 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
1459 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1460 process.&lt;/p&gt;
1461
1462 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1463 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
1464 </description>
1465         </item>
1466
1467         <item>
1468                 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
1469                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
1470                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
1471                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1472                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
1473 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
1474 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
1475 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1476 it, fetch the
1477 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
1478 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
1479 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1480 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
1481
1482 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
1483
1484 &lt;ul&gt;
1485
1486 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1487 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
1488
1489 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1490 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1491 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
1492
1493 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1494 the APT database, a database
1495 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
1496 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
1497
1498 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1499 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1500 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1501 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1502
1503 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
1504 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
1505
1506 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1507 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
1508
1509 &lt;/ul&gt;
1510
1511 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1512 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1513 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1514 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
1515
1516 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
1517 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
1518 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
1519 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
1520 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1521
1522 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1523 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1524 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1525 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1526 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1527 method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1528 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1529 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
1530
1531 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
1532 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1533 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
1534 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1535 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
1536 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
1537
1538 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
1539 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1540 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1541 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
1542 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
1543 </description>
1544         </item>
1545
1546         <item>
1547                 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
1548                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
1549                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
1550                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1551                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1552 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1553 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1554 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1555 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1556 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1557 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1558 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1559 not a durable solution.
1560
1561 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1562 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
1563
1564 &lt;ul&gt;
1565
1566 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1567   than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
1568 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
1569 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
1570 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
1571 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1572 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
1573 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
1574 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
1575 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
1576 size).&lt;/li&gt;
1577 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1578   X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
1579 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1580   the time).
1581
1582 &lt;/ul&gt;
1583
1584 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1585 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1586 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1587 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1588 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1589 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1590 Lenovo took over.  But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1591 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
1592
1593 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1594 external keyboard?  I&#39;ll have to check the
1595 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
1596 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1597 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
1598 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1599 </description>
1600         </item>
1601
1602         <item>
1603                 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
1604                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
1605                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
1606                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
1607                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1608 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1609 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
1610 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1611 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1612 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1613 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
1614
1615 &lt;pre&gt;
1616 #!/usr/bin/python
1617 import sys
1618 import apt
1619 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1620     cache = apt.Cache()
1621     cache.open(None)
1622     thepkgs = []
1623     for pkg in cache:
1624         version = pkg.candidate
1625         if version is None:
1626             version = pkg.installed
1627         if version is None:
1628             continue
1629         record = version.record
1630         if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
1631             continue
1632         mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
1633         for t in mime_types:
1634             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1635             if t == mimetype:
1636                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1637     return thepkgs
1638 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
1639 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
1640     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1641 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
1642 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1643     print &quot;  %s&quot; %pkg
1644 &lt;/pre&gt;
1645
1646 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
1647
1648 &lt;pre&gt;
1649 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1650 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1651   gecko-mediaplayer
1652 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1653 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1654   browser-plugin-gnash
1655 %
1656 &lt;/pre&gt;
1657
1658 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1659 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1660 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1661 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
1662
1663 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
1664 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1665 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
1666 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today).  Lack
1667 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1668 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
1669 </description>
1670         </item>
1671
1672         <item>
1673                 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
1674                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
1675                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
1676                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
1677                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
1678 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
1679 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1680 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1681 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1682 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1683 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1684 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
1685
1686 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1687 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1688 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1689 can be found on the
1690 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
1691 site&lt;/a&gt;.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1692 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1693 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1694 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
1695
1696 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1697
1698 &lt;pre&gt;
1699   count MIME type
1700   ----- -----------------------
1701      32 text/plain
1702      30 audio/mpeg
1703      29 image/png
1704      28 image/jpeg
1705      27 application/ogg
1706      26 audio/x-mp3
1707      25 image/tiff
1708      25 image/gif
1709      22 image/bmp
1710      22 audio/x-wav
1711      20 audio/x-flac
1712      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1713      18 video/x-ms-asf
1714      18 audio/x-musepack
1715      18 audio/x-mpeg
1716      18 application/x-ogg
1717      17 video/mpeg
1718      17 audio/x-scpls
1719      17 audio/ogg
1720      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1721 &lt;/pre&gt;
1722
1723 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1724
1725 &lt;pre&gt;
1726   count MIME type
1727   ----- -----------------------
1728      33 text/plain
1729      32 image/png
1730      32 image/jpeg
1731      29 audio/mpeg
1732      27 image/gif
1733      26 image/tiff
1734      26 application/ogg
1735      25 audio/x-mp3
1736      22 image/bmp
1737      21 audio/x-wav
1738      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1739      19 audio/x-mpeg
1740      18 video/mpeg
1741      18 audio/x-scpls
1742      18 audio/x-flac
1743      18 application/x-ogg
1744      17 video/x-ms-asf
1745      17 text/html
1746      17 audio/x-musepack
1747      16 image/x-xbitmap
1748 &lt;/pre&gt;
1749
1750 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1751
1752 &lt;pre&gt;
1753   count MIME type
1754   ----- -----------------------
1755      31 text/plain
1756      31 image/png
1757      31 image/jpeg
1758      29 audio/mpeg
1759      28 application/ogg
1760      27 image/gif
1761      26 image/tiff
1762      26 audio/x-mp3
1763      23 audio/x-wav
1764      22 image/bmp
1765      21 audio/x-flac
1766      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1767      19 audio/x-mpeg
1768      18 video/x-ms-asf
1769      18 video/mpeg
1770      18 audio/x-scpls
1771      18 application/x-ogg
1772      17 audio/x-musepack
1773      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1774      16 video/x-msvideo
1775 &lt;/pre&gt;
1776
1777 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1778 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1779 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1780 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
1781
1782 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
1783 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
1784 </description>
1785         </item>
1786
1787         <item>
1788                 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
1789                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
1790                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
1791                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
1792                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
1793 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
1794 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
1795 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
1796 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1797 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1798 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1799 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1800 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1801 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
1802
1803 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1804 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1805 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1806 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
1807
1808 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1809 Package: package-name
1810 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
1811 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1812
1813 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1814 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
1815
1816 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1817 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
1818
1819 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1820 Package: cheese
1821 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
1822 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1823
1824 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1825 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
1826
1827 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1828 Package: pcmciautils
1829 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1830 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1831
1832 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1833 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
1834
1835 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1836 Package: colorhug-client
1837 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
1838 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1839
1840 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1841 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1842 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
1843
1844 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1845 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1846 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1847 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1848 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
1849 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1850 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1851 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
1852
1853 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1854 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1855 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1856 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1857 try the
1858 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
1859 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1860 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1861 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
1862
1863 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1864 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
1865
1866 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1867 % ./hw-support-lookup
1868 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
1869 &lt;br&gt;%
1870 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1871
1872 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1873 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
1874
1875 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1876 % ./hw-support-lookup
1877 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
1878 &lt;br&gt;%
1879 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1880
1881 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1882 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
1883 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
1884
1885 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1886 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1887 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1888 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1889 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1890 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1891 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1892 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
1893
1894 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1895 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1896 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1897 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1898 </description>
1899         </item>
1900
1901         <item>
1902                 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
1903                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
1904                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
1905                 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1906                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1907 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1908 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1909 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1910 in
1911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
1912 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
1913
1914 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1915
1916 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1917 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1918 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1919 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
1920 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
1921 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
1922
1923 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1924 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
1925
1926 &lt;pre&gt;
1927 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1928 &lt;/pre&gt;
1929
1930 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1931 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
1932
1933 &lt;pre&gt;
1934 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1935 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1936 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1937 %
1938 &lt;/pre&gt;
1939
1940 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1941
1942 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1943 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
1944
1945 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1946 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1947 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1948
1949 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
1950
1951 &lt;pre&gt;
1952  v   00008086  (vendor)
1953  d   00002770  (device)
1954  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1955  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1956  bc  06        (bus class)
1957  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1958  i   00        (interface)
1959 &lt;/pre&gt;
1960
1961 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
1962 -n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1963 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1964 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
1965
1966 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1967 means.&lt;/p&gt;
1968
1969 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1970
1971 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1972 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
1973
1974 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1975 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1976 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1977
1978 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
1979
1980 &lt;pre&gt;
1981  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1982  p    0001  (device product)
1983  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1984  dc     09  (device class)
1985  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1986  dp     00  (device protocol)
1987  ic     09  (interface class)
1988  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1989  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1990 &lt;/pre&gt;
1991
1992 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1993 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1994 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
1995
1996 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1997 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1998 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1999 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
2000 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
2001 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2002
2003 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
2004 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
2005 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
2006
2007 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2008
2009 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
2010 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
2011
2012 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2013 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2014 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2015
2016 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
2017
2018 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2019
2020 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
2021 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
2022 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
2023
2024 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2025 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
2026 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2027
2028 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
2029
2030 &lt;pre&gt;
2031  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
2032  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
2033  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
2034  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
2035  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
2036  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
2037  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
2038  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
2039  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
2040  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
2041  ct   10             (chassis type)
2042  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
2043 &lt;/pre&gt;
2044
2045 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
2046 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
2047
2048 &lt;pre&gt;
2049   3 Desktop
2050   4 Low Profile Desktop
2051   5 Pizza Box
2052   6 Mini Tower
2053   7 Tower
2054   8 Portable
2055   9 Laptop
2056  10 Notebook
2057  11 Hand Held
2058  12 Docking Station
2059  13 All In One
2060  14 Sub Notebook
2061  15 Space-saving
2062  16 Lunch Box
2063  17 Main Server Chassis
2064  18 Expansion Chassis
2065  19 Sub Chassis
2066  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
2067  21 Peripheral Chassis
2068  22 RAID Chassis
2069  23 Rack Mount Chassis
2070  24 Sealed-case PC
2071  25 Multi-system
2072  26 CompactPCI
2073  27 AdvancedTCA
2074  28 Blade
2075  29 Blade Enclosing
2076 &lt;/pre&gt;
2077
2078 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
2079 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
2080 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
2081
2082 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2083
2084 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
2085 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
2086
2087 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2088 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
2089 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2090
2091 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
2092
2093 &lt;pre&gt;
2094   ty  01  (type)
2095   pr  00  (prototype)
2096   id  00  (id)
2097   ex  00  (extra)
2098 &lt;/pre&gt;
2099
2100 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
2101 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
2102
2103 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2104
2105 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
2106 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
2107 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2108 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2109 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
2110 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2111 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
2112
2113 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2114
2115 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2116 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
2117
2118 &lt;pre&gt;
2119   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2120     echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
2121     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
2122   done
2123 &lt;/pre&gt;
2124
2125 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2126 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
2127
2128 &lt;pre&gt;
2129   acpi:ACPI0003:
2130     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2131   acpi:device:
2132   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2133   acpi:IBM0068:
2134     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2135     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2136     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2137     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2138   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2139     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2140     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2141     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2142   [...]
2143 &lt;/pre&gt;
2144
2145 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2146 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2147 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2148 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2149
2150 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
2151 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
2152 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
2153 </description>
2154         </item>
2155
2156         <item>
2157                 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
2158                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
2159                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
2160                 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2161                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2162 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2163 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2164 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
2165 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
2166 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
2167 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2168 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
2169 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2170 contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
2171 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2172 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
2173 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2174 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
2175 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2176 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
2177 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
2178 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2179 </description>
2180         </item>
2181
2182         <item>
2183                 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
2184                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
2185                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
2186                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2187                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2188 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2189 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2190 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2191 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2192 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2193 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2194 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2195 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2196 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
2197 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
2198
2199 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
2200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
2201 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
2202 simple:
2203
2204 &lt;ul&gt;
2205
2206 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2207   starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
2208
2209 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2210   hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
2211
2212 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2213   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2214   packages.&lt;/li&gt;
2215
2216 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2217   package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
2218
2219 &lt;/ul&gt;
2220
2221 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2222 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2223 discover database to find packages and
2224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
2225 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
2226
2227 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2228 draft package is now checked into
2229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
2230 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
2231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
2232 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2233 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2234 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
2235 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
2236 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2237 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
2238 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
2239 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
2240 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
2241
2242 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2243 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2244 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
2245
2246 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2247
2248 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2249 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
2250 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
2251
2252 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2253 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2254 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
2255 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2256 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2257 reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2258 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
2259
2260 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2261 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
2262 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
2263 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2264 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
2265 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
2266 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2267 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
2268 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
2269
2270 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2271 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2272 </description>
2273         </item>
2274
2275         <item>
2276                 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
2277                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
2278                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
2279                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2280                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2281 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
2282 NXT&lt;/a&gt;.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2283 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2284 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
2285 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2286 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
2287 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2288 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
2289 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2290
2291 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
2292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
2293 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
2294 </description>
2295         </item>
2296
2297         <item>
2298                 <title>A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</title>
2299                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</link>
2300                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</guid>
2301                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
2302                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
2303 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
2304 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
2305 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
2306 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
2307 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
2308 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
2309 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
2310 cost around NOK 15&amp;nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
2311 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
2312 followed by many others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2313
2314 &lt;p&gt;The public list of donors can be found on
2315 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;the
2316 donation page&lt;/a&gt; for the project, which also contain instructions if
2317 you want to donate to the project.&lt;/p&gt;
2318 </description>
2319         </item>
2320
2321         <item>
2322                 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
2323                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
2324                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
2325                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2326                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2327 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
2328
2329 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
2330 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2331 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2332 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2333 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
2334 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
2335 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2336 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
2337 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2338 name.&lt;/p&gt;
2339
2340 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2341 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2342 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
2343
2344 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2345 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2346 cd bitcoin
2347 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2348 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2349 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2350
2351 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
2352 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2353 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
2354 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
2355 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
2356 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2357 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2358 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2359 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
2360
2361 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2362 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2363 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2364 </description>
2365         </item>
2366
2367         <item>
2368                 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
2369                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
2370                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
2371                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
2372                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
2373 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
2374 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2375 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
2376 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
2377 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
2378 is now maintained by a
2379 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
2380 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
2381 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2382 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2383 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2384 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2385 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2386 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2387 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2388 Corallo in a
2389 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
2390 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2391 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
2392
2393 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2394 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2395 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2396 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2397 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2398 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2399 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
2400 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2401 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2402 new version to unstable.
2403
2404 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2405 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2406 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2407 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2408 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2409 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2410 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2411 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2412 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2413 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2414 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2415 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2416 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2417 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2418 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
2419
2420 &lt;p&gt;My
2421 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
2422 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2423 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2424 years ago, as can be
2425 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
2426 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
2427 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2428 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2429 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2430 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2431 the same address as last time,
2432 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2433 </description>
2434         </item>
2435
2436         <item>
2437                 <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
2438                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>
2439                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
2440                 <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2441                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
2442 &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
2443 Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
2444 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
2445 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
2446 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
2447 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
2448 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
2449 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
2450 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
2451
2452 are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
2453 different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
2454 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
2455 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;
2456
2457 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2458 2004-05-27 Book Store
2459       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
2460       Liabilities:Visa
2461 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2462
2463 &lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
2464 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
2465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
2466 Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
2467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
2468 Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
2469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
2470 Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
2471 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
2472 Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
2473 &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
2474 M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
2475 recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;
2476
2477 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
2478 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
2479 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
2480 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
2481 seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;
2482
2483 &lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
2484 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
2485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
2486 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
2487 play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
2488 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
2489 using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
2490 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
2491 for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
2492 </description>
2493         </item>
2494
2495         <item>
2496                 <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
2497                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>
2498                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
2499                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2500                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
2501 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
2502 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
2503 administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
2504 I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
2505 an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
2506 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
2507 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
2508 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
2509 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
2510 Python.&lt;/p&gt;
2511
2512 &lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
2513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
2514 client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
2515 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
2516 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
2517 simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;
2518
2519 &lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
2520 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
2521 user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;
2522
2523 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2524 #!/usr/bin/env python
2525 import getpass
2526 import xmlrpclib
2527 server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
2528 username = getpass.getuser()
2529 password = getpass.getpass()
2530 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
2531 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
2532 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
2533 print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
2534 result = server.logout(sessionid)
2535 print result
2536 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2537
2538 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
2539 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
2540 </description>
2541         </item>
2542
2543         <item>
2544                 <title>Why isn&#39;t the value of copyright taxed?</title>
2545                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</link>
2546                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</guid>
2547                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2548                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While working on a
2549 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;Norwegian
2550 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig&lt;/a&gt; (76% done),
2551 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
2552 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
2553 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
2554 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.&lt;/p&gt;
2555
2556 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
2557 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
2558 -15-30-19-00/&quot;&gt;presentation
2559 by John Perry Barlow&lt;/a&gt;, and concluded that it was best to put it
2560 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
2561 argument that copyrighted works are &quot;intellectual property&quot;, as the
2562 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
2563 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
2564 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I&#39;m sharing the idea here to
2565 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
2566 arguments.&lt;/p&gt;
2567
2568 &lt;p&gt;Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
2569 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
2570 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
2571 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
2572 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
2573 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
2574 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
2575 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;
2576
2577 &lt;p&gt;If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
2578 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
2579 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
2580 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
2581 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
2582 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
2583 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
2584 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
2585 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
2586 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
2587 correct right holder.&lt;/p&gt;
2588
2589 &lt;p&gt;If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
2590 they will have a small incentive to &quot;disown&quot; their copyright, and let
2591 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
2592 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
2593 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
2594 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
2595 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
2596 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
2597 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
2598 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
2599 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
2600 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
2601 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
2602 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;
2603
2604 &lt;p&gt;The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
2605 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
2606 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .&lt;/p&gt;
2607
2608 &lt;p&gt;Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
2609 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.&lt;/p&gt;
2610 </description>
2611         </item>
2612
2613         <item>
2614                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</title>
2615                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</link>
2616                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</guid>
2617                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2618                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is another interview with one of the people in the &lt;a
2619 href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
2620 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
2621 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
2622 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
2623 the people behind the German
2624 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/&quot;&gt;IT-Zukunft Schule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
2625 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
2626 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2627
2628 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2629
2630 &lt;p&gt;I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
2631 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with &quot;my man&quot; Mike Gabriel, my
2632 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
2633
2634 &lt;p&gt;At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
2635 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
2636 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
2637 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
2638 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
2639 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.&lt;/p&gt;
2640
2641 &lt;p&gt;In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
2642 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
2643 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
2644 working in our own school project &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; in North
2645 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
2646 relationship management and the communication processes in the
2647 project.&lt;/p&gt;
2648
2649 &lt;p&gt;Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
2650 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
2651 and a yoga teacher.&lt;/p&gt;
2652
2653 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2654 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2655
2656 &lt;p&gt;I fell in love with Mike ;-).&lt;/p&gt;
2657
2658 &lt;p&gt;Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
2659 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
2660 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
2661 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
2662 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
2663 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
2664 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
2665 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
2666 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2667 parents.&lt;/p&gt;
2668
2669 &lt;p&gt;Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2670 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2671 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2672 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2673 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2674 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2675 Germany.&lt;/p&gt;
2676
2677 &lt;p&gt;For information about our school project you can read
2678 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html&quot;&gt;the
2679 interview with Mike Gabriel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2680
2681 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2682 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2683
2684 &lt;p&gt;First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2685 answer comes rather from a social point of view.&lt;/p&gt;
2686
2687 &lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2688 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2689 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2690 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2691 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2692 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
2693 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2694 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2695 teachers, parents...&lt;/p&gt;
2696
2697 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2698 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2699
2700 &lt;p&gt;I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2701 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2702
2703 &lt;p&gt;What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2704 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2705 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2706 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2707 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2708
2709 &lt;p&gt;Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2710 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2711 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2712 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2713 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2714 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2715 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
2716
2717 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2718
2719 &lt;p&gt;On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2720 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2721 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2722 my N900 running with Maemo.&lt;/p&gt;
2723
2724 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2725 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2726
2727 &lt;p&gt;I am really convinced that in our school project &quot;IT-Zukunft
2728 Schule&quot; we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
2729 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
2730 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
2731 strategy has three crucial pillars:&lt;/p&gt;
2732
2733 &lt;ul&gt;
2734
2735 &lt;li&gt;We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
2736 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
2737 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.&lt;/li&gt;
2738
2739 &lt;li&gt;Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
2740 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
2741 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
2742 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
2743 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
2744 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
2745 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.&lt;/li&gt;
2746
2747 &lt;li&gt;Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
2748 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
2749 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
2750 offer to become more and more independent from us.&lt;/li&gt;
2751
2752 &lt;/ul&gt;
2753 </description>
2754         </item>
2755
2756         <item>
2757                 <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
2758                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
2759                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
2760                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2761                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
2762 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
2763 a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
2764 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
2765 see how a member of the bitcoin community
2766 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
2767 the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
2768 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
2769 competition.  My thoughts go to the
2770 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
2771 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
2772 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
2773 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
2774 powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;
2775
2776 &lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
2777 that the community already seem to have
2778 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
2779 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
2780 how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
2781 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
2782 wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
2783 </description>
2784         </item>
2785
2786         <item>
2787                 <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
2788                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
2789                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
2790                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2791                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
2792 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
2793 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
2794 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG association&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn
2795 make me a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt;.  NUUG
2796 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
2797 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
2798 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
2799 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
2800 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt; in the
2801 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
2802 it every time.&lt;/p&gt;
2803
2804 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
2805 article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/&quot;&gt;Stuart Kendrick&lt;/a&gt; from
2806 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
2807 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down&quot;&gt;What
2808 Takes Us Down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (longer version also
2809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf&quot;&gt;available
2810 from his own site&lt;/a&gt;), where he report what he found when he
2811 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
2812 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
2813 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
2814 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
2815 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.&lt;p&gt;
2816
2817 &lt;p&gt;The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
2818 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
2819 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
2820 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
2821 article: First the unplanned outage:
2822
2823 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2824 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
2825 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
2826 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
2827 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
2828 Duration:    40 minutes
2829 Scope:       Exchange 2003
2830 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
2831              a cluster failover.
2832
2833 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
2834              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
2835 Technician:  [xxx]
2836 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2837
2838 Next the planned outage:
2839
2840 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2841 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
2842 Severity:    Major (Planned)
2843 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
2844 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
2845 Duration:    10 hours
2846 Scope:       H2 Transport
2847 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
2848              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
2849              4510s.
2850 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
2851              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
2852              connectivity.
2853 Technician:  [xxx]
2854 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
2855
2856 &lt;p&gt;He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
2857 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
2858 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
2859 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
2860 people to write &#39;2012-06-16 06:00 +0000&#39; instead of the start time
2861 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
2862 that could be improved, read the article for the details.&lt;/p&gt;
2863
2864 &lt;p&gt;I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
2865 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
2866 university too.  We do register
2867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/&quot;&gt;planned
2868 changes and outages in a calendar&lt;/a&gt;, and report the to a mailing
2869 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
2870 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
2871 for other sites to consider too?&lt;/p&gt;
2872 </description>
2873         </item>
2874
2875         <item>
2876                 <title>Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</title>
2877                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</link>
2878                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</guid>
2879                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2880                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
2881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/&quot;&gt;how
2882 Amazon erased the books from a customer&#39;s kindle, locked the account
2883 and refuse to tell the customer why&lt;/a&gt;.  If a real book store did
2884 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
2885 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
2886 background information is available in Norwegian from
2887 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;.
2888 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
2889 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
2890 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
2891 willing to
2892 &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html&quot;&gt;
2893 break into customers equipment and remove the books&lt;/a&gt; people had
2894 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
2895 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
2896 sounded like
2897 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html&quot;&gt;Amazon
2898 would never do that again&lt;/a&gt;.  And here we are, three years
2899 later.&lt;/p&gt;
2900
2901 &lt;p&gt;And thought this action is
2902 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende&quot;&gt;against
2903 Norwegian regulations and law&lt;/a&gt;, it is according to the terms of use
2904 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
2905 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
2906 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
2907 rights.&lt;/p&gt;
2908
2909 &lt;p&gt;Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
2910 unacceptable terms.  For example
2911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about 40,000
2912 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt; (1,652
2913 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The Internet
2914 Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
2915 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
2916
2917 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
2918 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
2919 restored the account of the user, as reported by
2920 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;
2921 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt;.
2922 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
2923 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
2924 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
2925 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
2926 reading two opinions from
2927 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm&quot;&gt;Simon
2928 Phipps&lt;/a&gt; and
2929 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm&quot;&gt;Glen
2930 Moody&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
2931 details about the original story.&lt;/p&gt;
2932 </description>
2933         </item>
2934
2935         <item>
2936                 <title>The fight for freedom and privacy</title>
2937                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</link>
2938                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</guid>
2939                 <pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2940                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
2941 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
2942 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
2943 across a marvellous drawing by
2944 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/about.html&quot;&gt;Clay Bennett&lt;/a&gt;
2945 visualising some of what is going on.
2946
2947 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html&quot;&gt;
2948 &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2949
2950 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2951 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
2952 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
2953 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2954
2955 &lt;p&gt;Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
2956 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
2957 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
2958 just remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon&quot;&gt;the
2959 Panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, and can not help to think that we are slowly
2960 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.&lt;/p&gt;
2961 </description>
2962         </item>
2963
2964         <item>
2965                 <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
2966                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
2967                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
2968                 <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2969                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to a blog post by
2970 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html&quot;&gt;Eddy
2971 Petrișor&lt;/a&gt;, I became aware of yet another &quot;alternative medicine&quot;
2972 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
2973 According to the originating blog post about the detox &quot;cure&quot;
2974 &lt;a href=&quot;http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/&quot;&gt;ColonHelp
2975 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions&lt;/a&gt;, the producer
2976 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
2977 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
2978 wordpress.com, and they reply was &quot;We can confirm that Zenyth is
2979 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
2980 don&#39;t believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
2981 matter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2982
2983 &lt;p&gt;The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
2984 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
2985 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
2986 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
2987 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
2988 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
2989 to argue its side.&lt;/p&gt;
2990
2991 &lt;p&gt;This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
2992 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
2993 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect&quot;&gt;Streisand
2994 effect&lt;/a&gt; can make it rethink its strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
2995
2996 &lt;p&gt;What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
2997 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html&quot;&gt;a list of
2998 victims of detoxification&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2999 </description>
3000         </item>
3001
3002         <item>
3003                 <title>Why is your local library collecting the &quot;wrong&quot; computer books?</title>
3004                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</link>
3005                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</guid>
3006                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Oct 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3007                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
3008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge&quot;&gt;about
3009 the computer science book collection available in his local
3010 library&lt;/a&gt;, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
3011 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
3012 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
3013 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
3014 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
3015 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
3016 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
3017 recently published books.&lt;/p&gt;
3018
3019 &lt;p&gt;During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
3020 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
3021 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
3022 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
3023 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
3024 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
3025 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
3026 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
3027 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
3028 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens&quot;&gt;Stevens
3029 collection&lt;/a&gt;).  I picked several of the generic O&#39;Reilly books (ie
3030 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
3031 products) and stayed away from the &#39;teach yourself X in N days&#39; class.
3032 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
3033 for the library that evening.&lt;/p&gt;
3034
3035 &lt;p&gt;The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
3036 going to know that for example
3037 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming&quot;&gt;The
3038 Practice of Programming&lt;/a&gt; is a must-have in any computer library,
3039 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
3040 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
3041 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
3042 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
3043 book right away.&lt;/p&gt;
3044 </description>
3045         </item>
3046
3047         <item>
3048                 <title>Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</title>
3049                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
3050                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
3051                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3052                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian &lt;a
3053 href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book &lt;a
3054 href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
3055 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
3056 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
3057 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
3058
3059 When I started, I
3060 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
3061 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
3062 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
3063 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
3064 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
3065 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
3066 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:&lt;/p&gt;
3067
3068 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
3069
3070 &lt;p&gt;Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
3071 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
3072 the project files currently available from
3073 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3074
3075 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3076 the updated
3077 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
3078 and
3079 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
3080 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3081 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3082 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
3083 </description>
3084         </item>
3085
3086         <item>
3087                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</title>
3088                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</link>
3089                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</guid>
3090                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
3091                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
3092 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
3093 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
3094 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
3095 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
3096 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
3097 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.&lt;/p&gt;
3098
3099 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3100
3101 &lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
3102 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of &quot;light&quot;
3103 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
3104 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
3105 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
3106 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
3107 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
3108 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
3109 training is anyway very important&lt;/p&gt;
3110
3111 &lt;p&gt;I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
3112 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spse.ch/&quot;&gt;SPSE school&lt;/a&gt; (secondary) is a very
3113 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
3114 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
3115 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
3116
3117 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3118 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3119
3120 &lt;p&gt;Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
3121 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
3122 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn&#39;t
3123 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
3124 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
3125 hole.&lt;/p&gt;
3126
3127 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3128 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3129
3130 &lt;p&gt;Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
3131 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
3132 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
3133 engineered platform and you don&#39;t have to start to build up your PDC
3134 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I&#39;ve already done this once and I
3135 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
3136 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
3137 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
3138 hassle.&lt;/p&gt;
3139
3140 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3141 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3142
3143 &lt;p&gt;The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
3144 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
3145 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
3146 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
3147 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
3148 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
3149 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
3150 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)&lt;/p&gt;
3151
3152 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3153
3154 &lt;p&gt;I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
3155 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
3156 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
3157 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html&quot;&gt;Perceus&lt;/a&gt;
3158 has the same...&lt;/p&gt;
3159
3160 &lt;p&gt;For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
3161 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
3162 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
3163 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.&lt;/p&gt;
3164
3165 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3166 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3167
3168 &lt;P&gt;I think that the only real argument that school managers &quot;hear&quot; is
3169 cost reduction. They don&#39;t give too much weight on quality, stability,
3170 just because they are normally not open to change.&lt;/p&gt;
3171
3172 &lt;p&gt;Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
3173 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
3174 don&#39;t.&lt;/p&gt;
3175
3176 &lt;p&gt;We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
3177 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
3178 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
3179 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
3180 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
3181 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
3182 Those who don&#39;t have such needs will hardly move to Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
3183 </description>
3184         </item>
3185
3186         <item>
3187                 <title>IETF activity to standardise video codec</title>
3188                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</link>
3189                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</guid>
3190                 <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3191                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After the
3192 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html&quot;&gt;Opus
3193 codec made&lt;/a&gt; it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; as
3194 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716&lt;/a&gt;, I had a look
3195 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
3196 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
3197 area.  A non-&quot;working group&quot; mailing list
3198 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec&quot;&gt;video-codec&lt;/a&gt;
3199 was
3200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html&quot;&gt;created 2012-08-20&lt;/a&gt;.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
3201 formal working group should be formed.&lt;/p&gt;
3202
3203 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
3204 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html&quot;&gt;an
3205 email from someone&lt;/a&gt; in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
3206 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
3207 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
3208 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
3209 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
3210 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
3211
3212 &lt;p&gt;If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
3213 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
3214 IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
3215 </description>
3216         </item>
3217
3218         <item>
3219                 <title>IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</title>
3220                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</link>
3221                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</guid>
3222                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3223                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; announced the
3224 publication of of
3225 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716, the Definition
3226 of the Opus Audio Codec&lt;/a&gt;, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
3227 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
3228 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
3229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, IETF
3230 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
3231 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
3232 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
3233 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
3234 multimedia content on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
3235
3236 &lt;p&gt;IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
3237 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
3238 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
3239 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
3240
3241 &lt;p&gt;Visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opus-codec.org/&quot;&gt;Opus project page&lt;/a&gt; if
3242 you want to learn more about the solution.&lt;/p&gt;
3243 </description>
3244         </item>
3245
3246         <item>
3247                 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
3248                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
3249                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
3250                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3251                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
3252 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
3253 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
3254 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
3255 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
3256 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3257
3258 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
3259 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
3260 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
3261 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
3262
3263 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
3264 PostScript formats at
3265 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
3266 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3267 </description>
3268         </item>
3269
3270         <item>
3271                 <title>Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don&#39;t forget Officeshots)</title>
3272                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</link>
3273                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</guid>
3274                 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
3275                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
3276 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233&quot;&gt;Microsoft
3277 have been forced to open Office&lt;/a&gt;, and it made me remember and
3278 revisit the great site
3279 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;officeshots&lt;/a&gt; which allow you
3280 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
3281 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3282 </description>
3283         </item>
3284
3285         <item>
3286                 <title>Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</title>
3287                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
3288                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
3289                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3290                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
3291 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
3292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
3293 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
3294 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
3295 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
3296 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
3297 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
3298 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
3299 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
3300 summer I
3301 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
3302 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, and I have been able to secure the
3303 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.&lt;/p&gt;
3304
3305 &lt;p&gt;Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
3306 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
3307 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
3308 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
3309 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
3310 progress:&lt;/p&gt;
3311
3312 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
3313
3314 &lt;p&gt;The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
3315 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
3316 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
3317 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
3318 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
3319 english version of the docbook source.&lt;/p&gt;
3320
3321 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3322 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3323 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3324 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
3325 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
3326 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
3327 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
3328 project files currently available from &lt;a
3329 href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3330
3331 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3332 the updated
3333 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
3334 and
3335 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
3336 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3337 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3338 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
3339 </description>
3340         </item>
3341
3342         <item>
3343                 <title>Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</title>
3344                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</link>
3345                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</guid>
3346                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3347                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; one can specify
3348 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
3349 this information to pick the correct translations for &#39;chapter&#39;, &#39;see
3350 also&#39;, &#39;index&#39; etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
3351 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
3352 with &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;de&quot;&amp;gt;, and the document will show up with the
3353 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
3354 case for the language
3355 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html&quot;&gt;I
3356 am working with at the moment&lt;/a&gt;, Norwegian Bokmål.&lt;/p&gt;
3357
3358 &lt;p&gt;For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
3359 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
3360 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
3361 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
3362 of them do not handle it at all.&lt;/p&gt;
3363
3364 &lt;p&gt;A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
3365 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
3366 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
3367 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
3368 is &#39;no&#39;, Norwegian Nynorsk is &#39;nn&#39; and Norwegian Bokmål is &#39;nb&#39;.
3369 Historically the &#39;no&#39; language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
3370 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
3371 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
3372 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure &#39;no&#39; was an
3373 alias for &#39;nb&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
3374
3375 &lt;p&gt;Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
3376 understand &#39;nn&#39;.  There are translations for &#39;no&#39;, but not &#39;nb&#39; (BTS
3377 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/684391&quot;&gt;#684391&lt;/a&gt;), but due to a bug
3378 (BTS &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;#682936&lt;/a&gt;) the &#39;no&#39;
3379 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
3380 recognise &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The xmlto tool only recognise
3381 &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The end result that there is no language
3382 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
3383 at the same time. :(&lt;/p&gt;
3384
3385 &lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to use &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;nb&quot;&amp;gt;, but it will
3386 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
3387 processors. :(&lt;/p&gt;
3388
3389 &lt;p&gt;Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/&lt;/p&gt;
3390 </description>
3391         </item>
3392
3393         <item>
3394                 <title>Best way to create a docbook book?</title>
3395                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</link>
3396                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</guid>
3397                 <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3398                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I tried to send this text to the
3399 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/&quot;&gt;docbook-apps
3400 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org&lt;/a&gt;, but it only accept messages
3401 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
3402 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
3403 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
3404 out.&lt;/p&gt;
3405
3406 &lt;p&gt;I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
3407 learning curve at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
3408
3409 &lt;p&gt;To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
3410 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
3411 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
3412 available from
3413 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
3414 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
3415 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
3416 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
3417 Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
3418
3419 &lt;p&gt;I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
3420 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
3421 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
3422 problems.&lt;/p&gt;
3423
3424 &lt;ul&gt;
3425
3426 &lt;li&gt;Using dblatex, the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt; handling is not the way I want to,
3427    as &amp;lt;/part&amp;gt; do not really end the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt;. (See
3428    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683166&quot;&gt;BTS report #683166&lt;/a&gt;), the
3429    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
3430    index references spanning several pages (See
3431    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682901&quot;&gt;BTS report #682901&lt;/a&gt;), and
3432    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
3433    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;BTS report #682936&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
3434
3435 &lt;li&gt;Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
3436    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683163&quot;&gt;BTS report
3437    #683163&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
3438
3439 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
3440    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
3441    footnote and text body, see
3442    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683197&quot;&gt;BTS report #683197&lt;/a&gt;), and
3443    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
3444    refs listed are not right).&lt;/li&gt;
3445
3446 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.&lt;/li&gt;
3447
3448 &lt;li&gt;Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
3449    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.&lt;/li&gt;
3450
3451 &lt;/ul&gt;
3452
3453 &lt;p&gt;So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
3454 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
3455 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?&lt;/p&gt;
3456
3457 &lt;p&gt;What about HTML and EPUB versions?&lt;/p&gt;
3458 </description>
3459         </item>
3460
3461         <item>
3462                 <title>Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</title>
3463                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</link>
3464                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</guid>
3465                 <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
3466                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I reported earlier that I am working on
3467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;a
3468 norwegian version&lt;/a&gt; of the book
3469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
3470 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
3471 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
3472 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
3473 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3474
3475 &lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3476 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3477 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
3478 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
3479 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
3480 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
3481 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3482 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3483 print. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3484
3485 &lt;p&gt;The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3486 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3487 language.&lt;/p&gt;
3488 </description>
3489         </item>
3490
3491         <item>
3492                 <title>Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</title>
3493                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
3494                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
3495                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3496                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a
3497 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;project
3498 to translate&lt;/a&gt; the book
3499 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig
3500 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
3501 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version, to
3502 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3503 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3504 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
3505 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3506
3507 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3508 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
3509 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3510 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3511 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
3512 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3513 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
3514 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3515 send pull requests with fixes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3516 </description>
3517         </item>
3518
3519         <item>
3520                 <title>Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
3521                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</link>
3522                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</guid>
3523                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2012 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3524                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
3525 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project have users all over the globe, but until
3526 recently we have not known about any users in Norway&#39;s neighbour
3527 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
3528 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
3529 to adjust and scale the just released
3530 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3531 Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
3532 happy to share his answers with you here.&lt;/p&gt;
3533
3534 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3535
3536 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
3537 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
3538 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
3539 &quot;folkhighschool&quot; teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
3540 Norwegian I believe it&#39;s called &quot;Vuxenupplaring&quot;. I also have a master
3541 in &quot;Technology and social change&quot;. So I&#39;m not really a tech guy, I
3542 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
3543 perspective when working with IT.&lt;/p&gt;
3544
3545 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3546 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3547
3548 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
3549 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
3550 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
3551 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
3552 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
3553 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
3554
3555 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3556 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3557
3558 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
3559 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
3560 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
3561 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
3562 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
3563 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
3564 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
3565 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
3566 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
3567 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to &quot;beat around the bush&quot; by
3568 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
3569 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
3570 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
3571 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
3572 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
3573 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
3574 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
3575 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
3576 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
3577 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
3578 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
3579 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit &quot;oldish&quot; applications. Debian is
3580 quicker to update.
3581
3582 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3583 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3584
3585 &lt;p&gt;Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
3586 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
3587 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
3588 sound from working with them.  It&#39;s a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
3589 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
3590 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.&lt;/p&gt;
3591
3592 &lt;p&gt;I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
3593 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
3594 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
3595 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
3596 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
3597 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
3598 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
3599 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
3600 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
3601 some applications can&#39;t be open source. As for us we really need to
3602 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
3603 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
3604 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
3605 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
3606 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;
3607
3608 &lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
3609 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
3610 market to Adobe. The only &quot;equivalent&quot; to InDesign in the opensource
3611 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
3612 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
3613 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
3614 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
3615 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;
3616
3617 &lt;p&gt;We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
3618 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
3619 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
3620 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
3621 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
3622 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
3623 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
3624 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
3625 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
3626 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
3627 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
3628 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
3629 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
3630 sound file.&lt;/p&gt;
3631
3632 &lt;p&gt;So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
3633 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
3634 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
3635 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
3636 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
3637 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
3638 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
3639 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
3640 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.&lt;/p&gt;
3641
3642 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3643
3644 &lt;p&gt;Myself I&#39;m running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
3645 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
3646 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
3647 )&lt;/p&gt;
3648
3649 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3650 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3651
3652 &lt;p&gt;To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
3653 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
3654 it&#39;s also very important that the multimedia support is working
3655 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
3656 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
3657 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
3658 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
3659 idea. It&#39;s also important that the open source software works even for
3660 the administration.  It&#39;s hard to convince the teachers to stick with
3661 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
3662 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
3663 will create a difference in &quot;status&quot; between classes, so a good
3664 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
3665 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
3666 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.&lt;/p&gt;
3667
3668 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
3669 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
3670 article &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/&quot;&gt;Radio station
3671 management with Airtime&lt;/a&gt;,
3672 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/&quot;&gt;Airtime&lt;/a&gt; which
3673 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
3674 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivendellaudio.org/&quot;&gt;Rivendell&lt;/a&gt; which claim to
3675 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
3676 useful to the aspiring radio producer.&lt;/p&gt;
3677 </description>
3678         </item>
3679
3680         <item>
3681                 <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
3682                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
3683                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
3684                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
3685                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
3686 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
3687 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
3688 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
3689 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
3690 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
3691 Steinberg in his blog post
3692 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/&quot;&gt;Can
3693 you recognize the million pound chair?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Read it and weep for the
3694 spending of your tax money.&lt;/p&gt;
3695
3696 &lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
3697 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
3698 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
3699 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
3700 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
3701 purchases.&lt;/p&gt;
3702 </description>
3703         </item>
3704
3705         <item>
3706                 <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
3707                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
3708                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
3709                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
3710                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
3711 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is a large collection of end user and school specific
3712 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
3713 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
3714 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
3715 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
3716 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
3717 receive.  The software is
3718
3719 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/&quot;&gt;named FET&lt;/a&gt;, and it provide a
3720 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
3721 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
3722 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
3723 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html&quot;&gt;Linux, MacOSX and
3724 Windows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3725
3726 &lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html&quot;&gt;the
3727 feature list&lt;/a&gt;, liftet from the project web site:&lt;/p&gt;
3728
3729 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
3730
3731   &lt;li&gt;FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
3732     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it &lt;/li&gt;
3733
3734   &lt;li&gt;Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
3735     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
3736     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
3737     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
3738     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
3739     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
3740     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
3741     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
3742     &lt;/li&gt;
3743
3744   &lt;li&gt;Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
3745     semi-automatic or manual allocation&lt;/li&gt;
3746
3747   &lt;li&gt;Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
3748     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports &lt;/li&gt;
3749
3750   &lt;li&gt;Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
3751     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)&lt;/li&gt;
3752
3753   &lt;li&gt;Import/export from CSV format&lt;/li&gt;
3754
3755   &lt;li&gt;The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
3756     formats &lt;/li&gt;
3757
3758   &lt;li&gt;Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
3759     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
3760     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
3761     (as separate sets)&lt;/li&gt;
3762
3763   &lt;li&gt;Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
3764     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
3765     percentage)&lt;/li&gt;
3766
3767   &lt;li&gt;Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
3768     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
3769     memory):
3770     &lt;ul&gt;
3771       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60&lt;/li&gt;
3772       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of working days per week: 35&lt;/li&gt;
3773       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of teachers: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3774       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
3775       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of subjects: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3776       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of activity tags&lt;/li&gt;
3777       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of activities: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
3778       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of rooms: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3779       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of buildings: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
3780       &lt;li&gt;Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
3781           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
3782           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
3783           activity)&lt;/li&gt;
3784       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
3785       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of space constraints&lt;/li&gt;
3786     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3787
3788   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
3789     &lt;ul&gt;
3790       &lt;li&gt;Break periods&lt;/li&gt;
3791       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
3792         &lt;ul&gt;
3793           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3794           &lt;li&gt;Max/min days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3795           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3796           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
3797           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
3798           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3799
3800           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3801             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3802         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3803       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
3804         &lt;ul&gt;
3805           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3806           &lt;li&gt;Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)&lt;/li&gt;
3807           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3808           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
3809           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
3810           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3811
3812           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3813             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
3814         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3815       &lt;li&gt;For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
3816         &lt;ul&gt;
3817           &lt;li&gt;A single preferred starting time&lt;/li&gt;
3818           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred starting times&lt;/li&gt;
3819           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred time slots&lt;/li&gt;
3820           &lt;li&gt;Min/max days between them&lt;/li&gt;
3821           &lt;li&gt;End(s) students day&lt;/li&gt;
3822           &lt;li&gt;Same starting time/day/hour&lt;/li&gt;
3823           &lt;li&gt;Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
3824             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)&lt;/li&gt;
3825           &lt;li&gt;Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)&lt;/li&gt;
3826           &lt;li&gt;Not overlapping&lt;/li&gt;
3827           &lt;li&gt;Max simultaneous in selected time slots&lt;/li&gt;
3828           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities&lt;/li&gt;
3829         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3830     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
3831
3832   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
3833     &lt;ul&gt;
3834       &lt;li&gt;Room not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
3835       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
3836         &lt;ul&gt;
3837           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
3838           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3839           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
3840         &lt;/ul&gt;
3841       &lt;/li&gt;
3842
3843       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
3844         &lt;ul&gt;
3845           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
3846           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
3847           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
3848         &lt;/ul&gt;
3849       &lt;/li&gt;
3850       &lt;li&gt;Preferred room(s):
3851         &lt;ul&gt;
3852           &lt;li&gt;For a subject&lt;/li&gt;
3853           &lt;li&gt;For an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3854           &lt;li&gt;For a subject and an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
3855           &lt;li&gt;Individually for a (sub)activity&lt;/li&gt;
3856         &lt;/ul&gt;
3857       &lt;/li&gt;
3858
3859       &lt;li&gt;For a set of activities:
3860         &lt;ul&gt;
3861           &lt;li&gt;Occupy a maximum number of different rooms&lt;/li&gt;
3862         &lt;/ul&gt;
3863       &lt;/li&gt;
3864     &lt;/ul&gt;
3865   &lt;/li&gt;
3866 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3867
3868 &lt;p&gt;I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
3869 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
3870 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
3871 manually, check it out.
3872
3873 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
3874 &lt;a href=&quot;http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/&quot;&gt;a
3875 blog post from MarvelSoft&lt;/a&gt;.  If you find FET useful, please provide
3876 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
3877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos&quot;&gt;Debian Edu HowTo
3878 section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3879 </description>
3880         </item>
3881
3882         <item>
3883                 <title>Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</title>
3884                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</link>
3885                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</guid>
3886                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jul 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3887                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the NUUG &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;
3888 project (Norwegian version of
3889 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; from
3890 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt;), we have discovered
3891 a problem with the municipalities using
3892 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbra.com/&quot;&gt;Zimbra&lt;/a&gt;.  When FiksGataMi send a
3893 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
3894 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
3895 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
3896 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
3897 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
3898 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
3899 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
3900 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
3901 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
3902 the From: header.&lt;/p&gt;
3903
3904 &lt;p&gt;This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3905 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3906 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3907 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3908 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
3909 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3910 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3911 behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;
3912
3913 &lt;p&gt;The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3914 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3915 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3916 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3917 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
3918 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
3919 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3920 </description>
3921         </item>
3922
3923         <item>
3924                 <title>Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</title>
3925                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</link>
3926                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</guid>
3927                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
3928                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3929 another interview with the people behind
3930 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
3931 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3932 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
3933 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3934 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3935 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
3936 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
3937
3938 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3939
3940 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3941 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3942 ICT in schools&lt;/p&gt;
3943
3944 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3945 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3946
3947 &lt;p&gt;At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3948 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3949 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3950 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
3951
3952 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3953 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3954
3955 &lt;p&gt;A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3956 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3957 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3958 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
3959
3960 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3961 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3962
3963 &lt;p&gt;Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3964 economical and technical resources in the different countries don&#39;t
3965 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3966 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3967 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3968 technologies in school.&lt;/p&gt;
3969
3970 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3971
3972 &lt;p&gt;Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3973 between Iceweasel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geany.org/&quot;&gt;Geany&lt;/a&gt; and
3974 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator&quot;&gt;Terminator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3975
3976 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3977 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3978
3979 &lt;p&gt;I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3980 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3981 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3982 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
3983
3984 &lt;p&gt;Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3985 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3986 universities. So different strategies are needed.&lt;/p&gt;
3987
3988 &lt;p&gt;But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3989 we&#39;ve done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3990 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3991 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3992 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3993 using wireless. I think we&#39;ll see more and more personal devices in
3994 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3995 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3996 working there.&lt;/p&gt;
3997 </description>
3998         </item>
3999
4000         <item>
4001                 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
4002                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
4003                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
4004                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4005                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4006 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
4007 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
4008 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4009 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4010 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
4011 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4012 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4013 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
4014 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
4015 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
4016
4017 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4018 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4019 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4020 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
4021 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
4022 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
4023 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
4024 </description>
4025         </item>
4026
4027         <item>
4028                 <title>Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</title>
4029                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</link>
4030                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</guid>
4031                 <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4032                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During my work on
4033 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
4034 based on Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;, I came across some issues that should be
4035 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
4036 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
4037 explanation.&lt;/p&gt;
4038
4039 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4040
4041 &lt;li&gt;We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
4042 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
4043 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
4044 system depend on tasksel tasks in
4045 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
4046 installation.&lt;/li&gt;
4047
4048 &lt;li&gt;Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
4049 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
4050 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
4051 at least try to enable it for these services:
4052 &lt;ul&gt;
4053
4054   &lt;li&gt;CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
4055     quotas.&lt;/li&gt;
4056   &lt;li&gt;Nagios for admins checking the system status.&lt;/li&gt;
4057   &lt;li&gt;GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.&lt;/li&gt;
4058   &lt;li&gt;LDAP for admins updating LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
4059   &lt;li&gt;Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.&lt;/li&gt;
4060   &lt;li&gt;ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.&lt;/li&gt;
4061
4062 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4063
4064 &lt;li&gt;When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
4065 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
4066 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
4067 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind&lt;/li&gt;
4068
4069 &lt;li&gt;Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
4070 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
4071 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.&lt;/li&gt;
4072
4073 &lt;li&gt;Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
4074 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
4075 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/653305&quot;&gt;BTS report #653305&lt;/a&gt; and the
4076 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
4077 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
4078 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.&lt;/li&gt;
4079
4080 &lt;li&gt;Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
4081 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
4082 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
4083 in Wheezy.
4084
4085 &lt;li&gt;Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
4086 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
4087 up KDE login on slow networks.&lt;/li&gt;
4088
4089 &lt;li&gt;Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
4090 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
4091 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
4092 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.&lt;/li&gt;
4093
4094 &lt;li&gt;Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
4095 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
4096 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
4097 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..&lt;/li&gt;
4098
4099 &lt;li&gt;We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
4100 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
4101 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.&lt;/li&gt;
4102
4103 &lt;li&gt;We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
4104 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
4105 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.&lt;/li&gt;
4106
4107 &lt;li&gt;We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
4108 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
4109 requested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/588968&quot;&gt;BTS report
4110 #588968&lt;/a&gt; and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
4111 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.&lt;/li&gt;
4112
4113 &lt;li&gt;We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
4114 &lt;ul&gt;
4115
4116 &lt;li&gt;reduce the number of chemistry visualisers&lt;/li&gt;
4117 &lt;li&gt;consider dropping xpaint&lt;/li&gt;
4118 &lt;li&gt;and probably more?&lt;/li&gt;
4119 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
4120
4121 &lt;li&gt;Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
4122 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
4123 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
4124 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
4125 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
4126 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
4127 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
4128 for the LTSP chroot).&lt;/li&gt;
4129
4130
4131 &lt;li&gt;In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
4132 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
4133 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
4134 use.&lt;/li&gt;
4135
4136 &lt;li&gt;The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
4137 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
4138 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
4139 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
4140 new applications with a simple mouse click.&lt;/li&gt;
4141
4142 &lt;li&gt;The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
4143 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
4144 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
4145 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
4146 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
4147 instead of the &quot;it is documented&quot; method of today.&lt;/li&gt;
4148
4149 &lt;li&gt;A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
4150 &quot;take over&quot; the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
4151 There are at least three implementations,
4152 &lt;a href=&quot;italc.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;italc&lt;/a&gt;,
4153 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itais.net/help/en/&quot;&gt;controlaula&lt;/a&gt; og
4154 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epoptes.org/&quot;&gt;epoptes&lt;/a&gt; and we should pick one of
4155 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
4156 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
4157 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
4158 given room.&lt;/li&gt;
4159
4160 &lt;li&gt;Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
4161 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
4162 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
4163 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
4164 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
4165 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
4166 investigated.&lt;/li&gt;
4167
4168 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4169
4170 &lt;p&gt;I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
4171 version.&lt;/p&gt;
4172 </description>
4173         </item>
4174
4175         <item>
4176                 <title>TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</title>
4177                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</link>
4178                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</guid>
4179                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4180                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
4181 &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year&quot;&gt;TV
4182 with face recognition&lt;/a&gt; to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
4183 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
4184 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
4185 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
4186 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
4187 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
4188 be willing to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;
4189
4190 &lt;p&gt;I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
4191 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
4192 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
4193 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&quot;&gt;1984 by George
4194 Orwell&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4195 </description>
4196         </item>
4197
4198         <item>
4199                 <title>Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</title>
4200                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</link>
4201                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</guid>
4202                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
4203                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
4204 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html&quot;&gt;I
4205 reported how to get&lt;/a&gt; the support status out of Dell using an
4206 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
4207 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html&quot;&gt;discovered
4208 by Daniel De Marco in february&lt;/a&gt;.  Combined with my web scraping
4209 code for HP, Dell and IBM
4210 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;from
4211 2009&lt;/a&gt;, I got inspired and wrote
4212 &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/&quot;&gt;a
4213 web service&lt;/a&gt; based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
4214 support status and get a machine readable result back.&lt;/p&gt;
4215
4216 &lt;p&gt;This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
4217 output:
4218
4219 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4220 % GET &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&quot;&gt;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&lt;/a&gt;
4221 supportstatus({&quot;servicetag&quot;: &quot;2v1xwn1&quot;, &quot;warrantyend&quot;: &quot;2013-11-24&quot;, &quot;shipped&quot;: &quot;2010-11-24&quot;, &quot;scrapestamputc&quot;: &quot;2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847&quot;, &quot;scrapedurl&quot;: &quot;http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL&quot;, &quot;vendor&quot;: &quot;Dell&quot;, &quot;productid&quot;: &quot;&quot;})
4222 %
4223 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4224
4225 &lt;p&gt;It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
4226 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
4227 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.&lt;/p&gt;
4228 </description>
4229         </item>
4230
4231         <item>
4232                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
4233                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
4234                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
4235                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4236                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
4237 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4238 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
4239 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
4240 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
4241 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
4242
4243 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4244
4245 &lt;p&gt;My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
4246 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
4247 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
4248 by Angela).&lt;/p&gt;
4249
4250 &lt;p&gt;During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
4251 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
4252 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
4253 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
4254 becoming an osteopath.&lt;/p&gt;
4255
4256 &lt;p&gt;Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
4257 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
4258 introducing free software into schools. The project&#39;s name is
4259 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; (IT future for schools). The project links IT
4260 skills with communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;
4261
4262 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4263 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4264
4265 &lt;p&gt;While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
4266 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
4267 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
4268 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
4269 distributions that target being used for school networks.&lt;/p&gt;
4270
4271 &lt;p&gt;At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
4272 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
4273 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
4274 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
4275 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
4276 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
4277 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
4278 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
4279 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.&lt;/p&gt;
4280
4281 &lt;p&gt;In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
4282 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
4283 protection experts, other IT professionals.&lt;/p&gt;
4284
4285 &lt;p&gt;We came to two conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;
4286
4287 &lt;p&gt;First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
4288 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
4289 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
4290 whereas most of each school&#39;s requirements could mapped by a standard
4291 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
4292 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
4293 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
4294 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
4295 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
4296 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
4297 point.&lt;/p&gt;
4298
4299 &lt;p&gt;Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
4300 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
4301 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
4302 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
4303 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot;
4304 tries to provide an approach for this.&lt;/p&gt;
4305
4306 &lt;p&gt;Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
4307 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
4308 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school&#39;s IT
4309 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
4310 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
4311 spare time.&lt;/p&gt;
4312
4313 &lt;p&gt;We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
4314 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
4315 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
4316 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
4317 non-existent until 2010/2011.&lt;/p&gt;
4318
4319 &lt;p&gt;Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
4320 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
4321 avoidance do exist.&lt;/p&gt;
4322
4323 &lt;p&gt;We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
4324 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
4325 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
4326 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
4327 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
4328 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
4329 and probably a gain for all.&lt;/p&gt;
4330
4331 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4332 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4333
4334 &lt;p&gt;There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
4335 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
4336 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
4337 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
4338 project communication, honest communication within the group of
4339 developers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
4340
4341 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4342 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4343
4344 &lt;p&gt;Every coin has two sides:&lt;/p&gt;
4345
4346 &lt;p&gt;Technically: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/311188&quot;&gt;BTS issue
4347 #311188&lt;/a&gt;, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
4348 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
4349 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
4350 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
4351 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
4352 contribute).&lt;/p&gt;
4353
4354 &lt;p&gt;Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
4355 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
4356 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
4357 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
4358 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
4359 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
4360 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
4361 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
4362 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
4363 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
4364
4365 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4366
4367 &lt;p&gt;For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.&lt;/p&gt;
4368
4369 &lt;p&gt;For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
4370 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
4371 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.&lt;/p&gt;
4372
4373 &lt;p&gt;I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
4374 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
4375 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
4376 is being integrated in Ubuntu&#39;s software center.&lt;/p&gt;
4377
4378 &lt;p&gt;For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
4379 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
4380 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
4381 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
4382 whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;
4383
4384 &lt;p&gt;My favourite terminal emulator is KDE&#39;s Yakuake.&lt;/p&gt;
4385
4386 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4387 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4388
4389 &lt;p&gt;Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
4390 enrol people.&lt;/p&gt;
4391 </description>
4392         </item>
4393
4394         <item>
4395                 <title>SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</title>
4396                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</link>
4397                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</guid>
4398                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4399                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I wrote
4400 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;how
4401 to extract support status&lt;/a&gt; for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
4402 I have learned from colleges here at the
4403 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; that Dell have
4404 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
4405 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
4406 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
4407 demonstrate how to do it:&lt;/p&gt;
4408
4409 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4410 use strict;
4411 use warnings;
4412 use SOAP::Lite;
4413 use Data::Dumper;
4414 my $GUID = &#39;11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111&#39;;
4415 my $App = &#39;test&#39;;
4416 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die &quot;Please supply a servicetag. $!\n&quot;;
4417 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
4418 my $s = SOAP::Lite
4419     -&gt; uri(&#39;http://support.dell.com/WebServices/&#39;)
4420     -&gt; on_action( sub { join &#39;&#39;, @_ } )
4421     -&gt; proxy(&#39;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx&#39;)
4422     ;
4423 my $a = $s-&gt;GetAssetInformation(
4424     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;guid&#39;)-&gt;value($GUID)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
4425     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;applicationName&#39;)-&gt;value($App)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
4426     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;serviceTags&#39;)-&gt;value($servicetag)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
4427 );
4428 print Dumper($a -&gt; result) ;
4429 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4430
4431 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
4432
4433 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4434 $VAR1 = {
4435           &#39;Asset&#39; =&gt; {
4436                      &#39;Entitlements&#39; =&gt; {
4437                                        &#39;EntitlementData&#39; =&gt; [
4438                                                             {
4439                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
4440                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4441                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
4442                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4443                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
4444                                                             },
4445                                                             {
4446                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
4447                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4448                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
4449                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4450                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
4451                                                             },
4452                                                             {
4453                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
4454                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2007-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4455                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
4456                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
4457                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
4458                                                             }
4459                                                           ]
4460                                      },
4461                      &#39;AssetHeaderData&#39; =&gt; {
4462                                           &#39;SystemModel&#39; =&gt; &#39;GX620&#39;,
4463                                           &#39;ServiceTag&#39; =&gt; &#39;8DSGD2J&#39;,
4464                                           &#39;SystemShipDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00&#39;,
4465                                           &#39;Buid&#39; =&gt; &#39;2323&#39;,
4466                                           &#39;Region&#39; =&gt; &#39;Europe&#39;,
4467                                           &#39;SystemID&#39; =&gt; &#39;PLX_GX620&#39;,
4468                                           &#39;SystemType&#39; =&gt; &#39;OptiPlex&#39;
4469                                         }
4470                    }
4471         };
4472 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4473
4474 &lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
4475 service outside the
4476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation&quot;&gt;inline
4477 documentation&lt;/a&gt;, and according to
4478 &lt;a href=&quot;http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/&quot;&gt;one
4479 comment&lt;/a&gt; it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
4480 scraping HTML pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4481
4482 &lt;p&gt;Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
4483 you know of one, drop me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4484 </description>
4485         </item>
4486
4487         <item>
4488                 <title>First monitor calibration using ColorHug</title>
4489                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</link>
4490                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</guid>
4491                 <pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4492                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago my color calibration gadget
4493 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;ColorHug&lt;/a&gt; arrived in the
4494 mail, and I&#39;ve had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
4495 running Debian Squeeze, where
4496 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;the
4497 calibration software&lt;/a&gt; is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
4498 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
4499 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
4500 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
4501 another day.&lt;/p&gt;
4502
4503 &lt;p&gt;After calibration, I get a
4504 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile&quot;&gt;ICC color
4505 profile&lt;/a&gt; file that can be passed to programs understanding such
4506 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
4507 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
4508 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
4509 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
4510 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
4511 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
4512 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896&quot;&gt;discovered&lt;/a&gt;
4513 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
4514 and a simple&lt;/p&gt;
4515
4516 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4517 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
4518 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4519
4520 &lt;p&gt;later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
4521 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
4522 wrong monitor type for the &quot;led&quot; monitor I got, but the result is good
4523 enough for now.&lt;/p&gt;
4524 </description>
4525         </item>
4526
4527         <item>
4528                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</title>
4529                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</link>
4530                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</guid>
4531                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 May 2012 17:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
4532                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
4533 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4534 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
4535 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
4536 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
4537 since then, helping to make sure the
4538 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
4539 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; release became as good as it is..&lt;/p&gt;
4540
4541 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4542
4543 &lt;p&gt;I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
4544 Mathematics, and Computer Science (&quot;Informatik&quot;). During the past 12
4545 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
4546 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
4547 O- or A-level (&quot;Abitur&quot;).  For quite as long, I&#39;ve been taking care of
4548 our computer network.&lt;/p&gt;
4549
4550 &lt;p&gt;Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
4551 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
4552 (4 months).&lt;/p&gt;
4553
4554 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4555 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4556
4557 &lt;p&gt;We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
4558 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
4559 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
4560 (&quot;Best Newcomer Distribution&quot;, also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
4561 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
4562 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
4563 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
4564 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
4565 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
4566 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
4567 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
4568 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
4569 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
4570 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
4571
4572 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4573 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4574
4575 &lt;p&gt;Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
4576 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
4577 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
4578 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
4579 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
4580 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
4581 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
4582 administration costs tend towards zero.&lt;/p&gt;
4583
4584 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4585 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4586
4587 &lt;p&gt;While Debian&#39;s stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
4588 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
4589 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
4590 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
4591 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
4592 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
4593 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
4594 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
4595 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
4596 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
4597 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
4598 i.e. harder to understand for novices.&lt;/p&gt;
4599
4600 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4601
4602 &lt;p&gt;LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
4603 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
4604 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)&lt;/p&gt;
4605
4606 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4607 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4608
4609 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;
4610
4611 &lt;li&gt;Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
4612 people really &quot;own&quot; their hardware, to make them understand the
4613 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
4614 developing.&lt;/li&gt;
4615
4616 &lt;li&gt;Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany&#39;s public schools
4617 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
4618 licenses), so schools won&#39;t benefit from any savings here. This
4619 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
4620 share among German Skolelinux schools.&lt;/li&gt;
4621
4622 &lt;li&gt;Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
4623 trained. In many cases, teachers&#39; software customs are respected by
4624 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.&lt;/li&gt;
4625
4626 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
4627 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
4628 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
4629 shared world wide (school books e.g.).&lt;/li&gt;
4630
4631 &lt;li&gt;Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
4632 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don&#39;t
4633 need to know the &quot;ribbon menu&quot; in order to get employed.&lt;/li&gt;
4634
4635 &lt;li&gt;Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.&lt;/li&gt;
4636
4637 &lt;li&gt;Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
4638 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
4639 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
4640 keep sending documents in ODF formats.&lt;/li&gt;
4641
4642 &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4643 </description>
4644         </item>
4645
4646         <item>
4647                 <title>The cost of ODF and OOXML</title>
4648                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</link>
4649                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</guid>
4650                 <pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4651                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
4652 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
4653 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
4654 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
4655 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;
4656
4657 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hi.  I just noted your
4658 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
4659 comment:&lt;/p&gt;
4660
4661 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They&#39;re all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
4662 with the help of Google Translate I can&#39;t find any figures about the
4663 savings of &quot;moving to a flexible two standard&quot; as claimed by the
4664 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let&#39;s take
4665 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust.&quot;
4666 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4667
4668 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
4669 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
4670 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
4671 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
4672 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
4673 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
4674 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
4675 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
4676 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
4677 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
4678 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
4679 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
4680 of wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;
4681
4682 &lt;p&gt;Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
4683 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
4684 minutes converting to ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4685
4686 &lt;p&gt;See
4687 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&lt;/a&gt;
4688 and
4689 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&lt;/a&gt;
4690 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4691 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4692 </description>
4693         </item>
4694
4695         <item>
4696                 <title>ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</title>
4697                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</link>
4698                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</guid>
4699                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4700                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In january, I
4701 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/&quot;&gt;discovered
4702 the ColorHug&lt;/a&gt;, a USB dongle from
4703 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Hughski&lt;/a&gt; to calibrate
4704 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
4705 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;included
4706 in Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
4707 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
4708 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
4709 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
4710 should go in the mail on monday. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4711
4712 &lt;p&gt;If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
4713 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
4714 drivers. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4715 </description>
4716         </item>
4717
4718         <item>
4719                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</title>
4720                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</link>
4721                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</guid>
4722                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4723                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
4724 publish another interview with the people behind
4725 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
4726 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
4727 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
4728 details get right before release.
4729
4730 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4731
4732 &lt;p&gt;My name is Jürgen Leibner, I&#39;m 49 years old and living in
4733 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
4734 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
4735 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I&#39;m a
4736 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
4737 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
4738 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
4739 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.&lt;/p&gt;
4740
4741 &lt;p&gt;My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
4742 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
4743 home since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
4744
4745 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4746 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4747
4748 &lt;p&gt;Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
4749 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
4750 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
4751 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
4752 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
4753 computers in use. I answered: &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4754
4755 &lt;p&gt;Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
4756 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
4757 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
4758 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
4759 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
4760 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4761 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4762 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4763 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4764 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
4765 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4766 people nearby who founded &#39;skolelinux.de&#39;. It was the Skolelinux
4767 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
4768 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4769 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4770 Bielefeld in December of 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
4771
4772 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4773 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4774
4775 &lt;p&gt;When I&#39;m looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4776 for me as today.&lt;/p&gt;
4777
4778 &lt;p&gt;In the past there were advantages like:&lt;/p&gt;
4779
4780 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4781
4782 &lt;li&gt;I don&#39;t need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4783 they had little money to spent for computers and software.&lt;/li&gt;
4784
4785 &lt;li&gt;It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4786 cost.&lt;/li&gt;
4787
4788 &lt;li&gt;It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4789 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4790 clients because of it&#39;s preconfigured overall concept of being a
4791 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4792 server&lt;/li&gt;
4793
4794 &lt;li&gt;I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4795 school.&lt;/li&gt;
4796
4797 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4798
4799 &lt;p&gt;Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4800 came up in this way:&lt;/p&gt;
4801
4802 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4803
4804 &lt;li&gt;Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4805 now.&lt;/li&gt;
4806
4807 &lt;li&gt;They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4808 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4809 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.&lt;/li&gt;
4810
4811 &lt;li&gt;With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4812 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4813 interfaces used in the past.&lt;/li&gt;
4814
4815 &lt;li&gt;It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4816 different needs.&lt;/li&gt;
4817
4818 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is usable and gets better every day.&lt;/li&gt;
4819
4820 &lt;li&gt;More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4821 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4822 is sharing knowledge and minds.&lt;/li&gt;
4823
4824 &lt;li&gt;Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4825 solved today by Debian Edu. &lt;/li&gt;
4826
4827 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4828
4829 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4830 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4831
4832 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
4833
4834 &lt;li&gt;There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4835 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4836 whole municipality areas.&lt;/li&gt;
4837
4838 &lt;li&gt;Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4839 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4840 politicians.&lt;/li&gt;
4841
4842 &lt;li&gt;Technically there are no disadvantages I&#39;m aware of.&lt;/li&gt;
4843
4844 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4845
4846 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4847
4848 &lt;p&gt;I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4849 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4850 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4851 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4852 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4853 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.&lt;/p&gt;
4854
4855 &lt;p&gt;My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4856 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4857 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4858 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4859 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.&lt;/p&gt;
4860
4861 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4862 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4863
4864 &lt;p&gt;I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4865 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4866 countries and areas all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;
4867 </description>
4868         </item>
4869
4870         <item>
4871                 <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
4872                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>
4873                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
4874                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4875                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- IMG_5869.JPG --&gt;
4876 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4877
4878 &lt;p&gt;I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4879 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4880 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
4881 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4882 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
4883 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
4884 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4885 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
4886 are not marketed and sold to &quot;regular consumers&quot;.  The hair saloons
4887 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4888 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4889 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
4890 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
4891 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
4892 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4893 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.&lt;/p&gt;
4894
4895 &lt;p&gt;The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
4896 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4897 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
4898 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4899 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
4900 finally found a Danish supplier
4901 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html&quot;&gt;selling
4902 it for around NOK 1800,-&lt;/a&gt;.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4903 days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
4904
4905 &lt;p&gt;The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
4906 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
4907 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
4908 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4909 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4910 toys.&lt;/p&gt;
4911 </description>
4912         </item>
4913
4914         <item>
4915                 <title>HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</title>
4916                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
4917                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
4918                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4919                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
4920 article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4921 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
4922 that the video editor application included with
4923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
4924 X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
4925 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4926
4927 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4928 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
4929 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4930 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
4931 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4932
4933 &lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;
4934
4935 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
4936 &quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4937 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
4938 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4939
4940 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4941 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4942 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
4943 with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
4944 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4945 video.  AMR is
4946 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
4947 Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
4948 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4949 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;.  MP4 is
4950 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
4951 H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4952 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4953
4954 &lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
4955 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
4956 standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
4957 </description>
4958         </item>
4959
4960         <item>
4961                 <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
4962                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
4963                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
4964                 <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4965                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
4966 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
4967 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
4968 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
4969 standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4970 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4971 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4972 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4973 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
4974 on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;
4975
4976 &lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
4977 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
4978 And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
4979 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4980 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4981 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4982 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4983 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
4984 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4985 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
4986 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4987 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4988 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4989 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4990 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4991 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
4992 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4993 implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
4994
4995 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4996 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4997 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
4998 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4999 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
5000 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
5001 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
5002 attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
5003
5004 &lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
5005 from Simon Phipps
5006 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
5007 Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
5008
5009 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
5010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
5011 post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
5012 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
5013 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
5014 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
5015 hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
5016 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
5017 specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
5018 </description>
5019         </item>
5020
5021         <item>
5022                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
5023                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>
5024                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
5025                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
5026                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
5027 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
5028 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
5029 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
5030 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
5031 up in the recently released
5032 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
5033 Edu Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
5034
5035 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5036
5037 &lt;p&gt;My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
5038 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
5039 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
5040 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
5041 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
5042 information technology and science/technology.&lt;/p&gt;
5043
5044 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5045 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5046
5047 &lt;p&gt;Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
5048 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
5049 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
5050 contributing.&lt;/p&gt;
5051
5052 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5053 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5054
5055 &lt;p&gt;The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
5056 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
5057 Debian Project!&lt;/p&gt;
5058
5059 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5060 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5061
5062 &lt;p&gt;As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
5063 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
5064 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
5065 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
5066 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
5067 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
5068 rather small and often busy elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
5069
5070 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN&quot;&gt;Debian LAN&lt;/a&gt;
5071 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.&lt;/p&gt;
5072
5073 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5074
5075 &lt;p&gt;I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
5076 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
5077 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
5078 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.&lt;/p&gt;
5079
5080 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5081 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5082
5083 &lt;p&gt;One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
5084 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
5085 politicians, this works out great for the &quot;market-leader&quot;.  The school
5086 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
5087 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
5088 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
5089 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.&lt;/p&gt;
5090
5091 &lt;p&gt;To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
5092 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
5093 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to &#39;free&#39;
5094 the system.  There is currently some discussion about &quot;Open Data&quot; and
5095 &quot;Free/Open Standards&quot;.  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
5096 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
5097 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
5098 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.&lt;/p&gt;
5099 </description>
5100         </item>
5101
5102         <item>
5103                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
5104                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>
5105                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
5106                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5107                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
5108 like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
5109 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
5110 contributor to the
5111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
5112 Edu Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;.
5113
5114 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5115
5116 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
5117 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.&lt;/p&gt;
5118
5119 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5120 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5121
5122 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
5123 reason my name&#39;s in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
5124 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
5125 they&#39;d like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
5126 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
5127 &quot;localisation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
5128
5129 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5130 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5131
5132 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5133 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5134
5135 &lt;p&gt;These questions are too hard for me - I don&#39;t use it!  In fact I
5136 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I&#39;d got out of the
5137 education system.&lt;/p&gt;
5138
5139 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
5140 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
5141 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
5142 money on the latest hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
5143
5144 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5145
5146 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
5147 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
5148 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).&lt;/p&gt;
5149
5150 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5151 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5152
5153 &lt;p&gt;Well, I don&#39;t know.  I suppose I&#39;d be inclined to try reasoning
5154 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
5155 you would hardly need a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
5156 </description>
5157         </item>
5158
5159         <item>
5160                 <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
5161                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>
5162                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
5163                 <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5164                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent time with
5165 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt; on speeding
5166 up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
5167 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
5168 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
5169 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
5170 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
5171 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
5172 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
5173
5174 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
5175 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
5176 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
5177 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
5178 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
5179 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
5180 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
5181 around 230 access(2) calls.&lt;/p&gt;
5182
5183 &lt;p&gt;The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
5184 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
5185 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
5186 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
5187 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
5188 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
5189 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416&quot;&gt;KDE bug report
5190 from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about this problem, and it is still unsolved.&lt;/p&gt;
5191
5192 &lt;p&gt;My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
5193 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
5194 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
5195 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
5196 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
5197 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
5198 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
5199 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
5200 almost instantaneous.  I&#39;m not quite sure where to make the package
5201 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.&lt;/p&gt;
5202
5203 &lt;p&gt;The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
5204 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
5205 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
5206 that is not really an option at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
5207
5208 &lt;p&gt;If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
5209 (at) lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
5210 </description>
5211         </item>
5212
5213         <item>
5214                 <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
5215                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>
5216                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
5217                 <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5218                 <description>&lt;p&gt;About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
5219 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; by
5220 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
5221 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
5222 for schools.  Check out his article
5223 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
5224 distribution for education&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
5225 </description>
5226         </item>
5227
5228         <item>
5229                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
5230                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
5231                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
5232                 <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5233                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Germany is a core area for the
5234 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
5235 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
5236 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
5237
5238 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5239
5240 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve studied Mathematics at the university &#39;Ruhr-Universität&#39; in
5241 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I&#39;m working as a teacher at the school
5242 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/&quot;&gt;Westfalen-Kolleg
5243 Dortmund&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
5244 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
5245 examination &#39;Abitur&#39;, which will allow to study at a university. This
5246 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
5247 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.&lt;/p&gt;
5248
5249 &lt;p&gt;Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
5250 blended learning project called &#39;abitur-online.nrw&#39; and in some other
5251 information technology related projects. For about ten years I&#39;ve been
5252 teacher and coordinator for the &#39;abitur-online&#39; project at my
5253 school. Being now in my early sixties, I&#39;ve decided to leave school at
5254 the end of April this year.&lt;/p&gt;
5255
5256 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5257 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5258
5259 &lt;p&gt;The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
5260 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
5261 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
5262 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
5263 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
5264 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
5265 reach. At home I&#39;m using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
5266 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
5267 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
5268 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
5269 Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
5270
5271 &lt;p&gt;Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
5272 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
5273 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
5274 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
5275 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
5276 the admin teachers.&lt;/p&gt;
5277
5278 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5279 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5280
5281 &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it&#39;s
5282 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
5283 So it was a perfect choice.&lt;/p&gt;
5284
5285 &lt;p&gt;Being open source, there are no license problems and so it&#39;s
5286 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
5287 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It&#39;s of
5288 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
5289 a school and to choose where to get support for this.&lt;/p&gt;
5290
5291 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5292 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5293
5294 &lt;p&gt;Nothing yet.&lt;/p&gt;
5295
5296 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5297
5298 &lt;p&gt;At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
5299 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
5300 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
5301 LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;
5302
5303 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5304 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5305
5306 &lt;p&gt;Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
5307 that doesn&#39;t seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
5308 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.&lt;/p&gt;
5309 </description>
5310         </item>
5311
5312         <item>
5313                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</title>
5314                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</link>
5315                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</guid>
5316                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5317                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
5318
5319 &lt;p&gt;The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
5320 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
5321 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
5322 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
5323 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
5324 and also available from &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/38601767&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt;
5325 and download as a
5326 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
5327 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
5328
5329 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;kmail-kerberos-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
5330   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
5331     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
5332       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5333 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5334 </description>
5335         </item>
5336
5337         <item>
5338                 <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
5339                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
5340                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
5341                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
5342                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
5343 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
5344 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
5345 Squeeze release&lt;/a&gt; was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
5346 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;
5347
5348 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5349
5350 &lt;p&gt;I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
5351 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
5352 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
5353 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
5354 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
5355 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
5356 weren&#39;t able to convert many of them into sustainable
5357 installations.&lt;/p&gt;
5358
5359 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5360 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5361
5362 &lt;p&gt;Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
5363 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
5364 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
5365 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
5366 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
5367 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
5368 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
5369 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
5370 these things we decided to try it.&lt;/p&gt;
5371
5372 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5373 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5374
5375 &lt;p&gt;By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
5376 from that I have always believed in the same &quot;sustainable computing&quot;
5377 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
5378 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
5379 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
5380 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
5381 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
5382 proprietary software everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;
5383
5384 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5385 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5386
5387 &lt;p&gt;As a newcomer I&#39;m just finding out who&#39;s who in the community and
5388 how you&#39;re organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
5389 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
5390 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
5391 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!&lt;/p&gt;
5392
5393 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5394
5395 &lt;p&gt;Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
5396 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
5397 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
5398 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I&#39;m not sure if
5399 that counts...)&lt;/p&gt;
5400
5401 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5402 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5403
5404 &lt;p&gt;That&#39;s a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
5405 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
5406 the notion of &quot;computer&quot; means simply &quot;proprietary office
5407 applications&quot;.  However, schools today are experiencing budget
5408 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
5409 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
5410 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
5411 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
5412 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they&#39;re
5413 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it&#39;s encouraging that the
5414 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;
5415
5416 &lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
5417 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
5418 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.&lt;/p&gt;
5419 </description>
5420         </item>
5421
5422         <item>
5423                 <title>Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</title>
5424                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
5425                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
5426                 <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
5427                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
5428 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
5429 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
5430 believe is a very efficient work flow.&lt;/p&gt;
5431
5432 &lt;ol&gt;
5433
5434 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is written in a
5435 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in&quot;&gt;moinmoin wiki&lt;/a&gt; (see for example
5436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;the
5437 Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;) with support for exporting the content as
5438 docbook XML.&lt;/li&gt;
5439
5440 &lt;li&gt;This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
5441 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
5442 with the translated text.&lt;/li&gt;
5443
5444 &lt;li&gt;The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
5445 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
5446 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
5447 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
5448 images.&lt;/li&gt;
5449
5450 &lt;li&gt;The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
5451 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.&lt;/li&gt;
5452
5453 &lt;li&gt;The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
5454 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.&lt;/li&gt;
5455
5456 &lt;/ol&gt;
5457
5458 &lt;p&gt;This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
5459 issue is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/DocBook&quot;&gt;the docbook support
5460 we use in moinmoin&lt;/a&gt; is not actively maintained.  The docbook
5461 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
5462 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.&lt;/p&gt;
5463
5464 &lt;p&gt;If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
5465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;debian-edu-doc
5466 package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5467 </description>
5468         </item>
5469
5470         <item>
5471                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</title>
5472                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</link>
5473                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</guid>
5474                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5475                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
5476 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; based
5477 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5478 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5479 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
5480 you have not done so already.&lt;/p&gt;
5481
5482 &lt;p&gt;I plan to present the new version at
5483 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/&quot;&gt;a NUUG
5484 meeting&lt;/a&gt; on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
5485 in Oslo, Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
5486 </description>
5487         </item>
5488
5489         <item>
5490                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</title>
5491                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</link>
5492                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</guid>
5493                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5494                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/&quot;&gt;the
5495 interview series&lt;/a&gt; conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
5496 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5497 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
5498 more international audience.&lt;/p&gt;
5499
5500 &lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
5501 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
5502 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
5503 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
5504 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
5505 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
5506 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
5507
5508
5509 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5510
5511 &lt;p&gt;My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
5512 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
5513 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
5514 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
5515 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
5516 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
5517 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
5518 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
5519 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
5520 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
5521 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
5522
5523 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5524 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5525
5526 &lt;p&gt;In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
5527 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
5528 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
5529 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn&#39;t really improve my setup. I
5530 did various desperate searches for things like &quot;school Linux server&quot;
5531 and ended up in a document called &quot;Drift&quot; something or other. Reading
5532 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
5533 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
5534 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
5535 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
5536 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
5537 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
5538 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.&lt;/p&gt;
5539
5540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5541 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5542
5543 &lt;p&gt;For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
5544 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
5545 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
5546 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
5547 doesn&#39;t necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
5548 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
5549 Japan.&lt;/p&gt;
5550
5551 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5552 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5553
5554 &lt;p&gt;The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
5555 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
5556 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
5557 who don&#39;t need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
5558 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
5559 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
5560 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
5561 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
5562 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
5563 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
5564 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
5565 multiplies. For example, backup wasn&#39;t working properly in Lenny. It
5566 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
5567 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
5568 help.&lt;/p&gt;
5569
5570 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5571
5572 &lt;p&gt;Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
5573 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
5574 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
5575 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
5576 house, that&#39;s very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
5577 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
5578 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
5579 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
5580 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
5581 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
5582 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.&lt;/p&gt;
5583
5584 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5585 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5586
5587 &lt;p&gt;Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
5588 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
5589 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
5590 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
5591 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
5592 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
5593 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
5594 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
5595 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
5596 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
5597 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn&#39;t work, or their browser
5598 doesn&#39;t play flash, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
5599 </description>
5600         </item>
5601
5602         <item>
5603                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</title>
5604                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</link>
5605                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</guid>
5606                 <pubDate>Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
5607                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
5608
5609 &lt;p&gt;One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5610 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5611 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5612 also available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/37675399&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt; and
5613 download as a
5614 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
5615 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
5616
5617 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;gosa-mass-user-create-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
5618   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
5619     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
5620       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5621 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5622 </description>
5623         </item>
5624
5625         <item>
5626                 <title>Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5627                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5628                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5629                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Mar 2012 18:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
5630                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5631 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5632 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5633 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5634 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5635 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5636 </description>
5637         </item>
5638
5639         <item>
5640                 <title>Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</title>
5641                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</link>
5642                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</guid>
5643                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Mar 2012 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
5644                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
5645 / Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; initiated a student project to create a tool
5646 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
5647 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called &quot;stopmotion&quot;,
5648 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5649 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
5650 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5651 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
5652 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5653 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5654 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
5655 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5656 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
5657 year...&lt;/p&gt;
5658
5659 &lt;p&gt;Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5660 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5661 name,
5662 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/&quot;&gt;linuxstopmotion&lt;/a&gt;.
5663 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5664 Internet search engines (try to search for &#39;stopmotion&#39; to see what I
5665 mean). I&#39;ve been following
5666 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community&quot;&gt;the
5667 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and the improvement already in place and planned for
5668 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
5669 Check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5670 </description>
5671         </item>
5672
5673         <item>
5674                 <title>Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5675                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5676                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5677                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5678                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5679 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5680 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
5681 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5682 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5683 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
5684 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5685 </description>
5686         </item>
5687
5688         <item>
5689                 <title>First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5690                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5691                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5692                 <pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
5693                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5694 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5695 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5696 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5697 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5698 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
5699 solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
5700 </description>
5701         </item>
5702
5703         <item>
5704                 <title>How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</title>
5705                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</link>
5706                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</guid>
5707                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
5708                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
5709 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5710 &lt;a href=&quot;http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532&quot;&gt;I was
5711 close&lt;/a&gt; this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
5712 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
5713 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5714 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
5715 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
5716 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.&lt;/p&gt;
5717
5718 &lt;p&gt;After fumbling a bit, I
5719 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/&quot;&gt;found
5720 that hdparm -I&lt;/a&gt; will report the disk serial number, which is
5721 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
5722 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:&lt;/p&gt;
5723
5724 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5725 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep &#39;(F)&#39;|tr &#39; &#39; &quot;\n&quot;|grep &#39;(F)&#39;|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5726 do
5727     printf &quot;Failed disk $d: &quot;
5728     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep &#39;Serial Num&#39;
5729 done
5730 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
5731
5732 &lt;p&gt;Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5733 next time, and in case other find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;
5734
5735 &lt;p&gt;At the moment I have two failing disk. :(&lt;/p&gt;
5736
5737 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5738 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5739 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5740 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
5741 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
5742
5743 &lt;p&gt;The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5744 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5745 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5746 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
5747 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5748 mounted inside my box.&lt;/p&gt;
5749
5750 &lt;p&gt;I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5751 Software RAID in the
5752 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html&quot;&gt;nagios-plugins-standard&lt;/a&gt;
5753 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5754 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
5755 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5756 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5757 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.&lt;/p&gt;
5758 </description>
5759         </item>
5760
5761         <item>
5762                 <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
5763                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
5764                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
5765                 <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
5766                 <description>&lt;p&gt;New in the Squeeze version of
5767 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is the
5768 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5769 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
5770 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from &lt;tt&gt;http://wpad/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt;, to
5771 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5772 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
5773 change the global proxy setting by editing
5774 &lt;tt&gt;tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt; and the change propagate
5775 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.&lt;/p&gt;
5776
5777 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5778 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5779 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):&lt;/p&gt;
5780
5781 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5782 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5783 {
5784    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5785        isPlainHostName(host) ||
5786        dnsDomainIs(host, &quot;.intern&quot;))
5787       return &quot;DIRECT&quot;;
5788    else
5789       return &quot;PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT&quot;;
5790 }
5791 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5792
5793 &lt;p&gt;to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:&lt;/p&gt;
5794
5795 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
5796 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5797 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5798 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
5799
5800 &lt;p&gt;To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5801 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5802 would be used for
5803 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;,
5804 and insert this extracted proxy URL in &lt;tt&gt;/etc/environment&lt;/tt&gt; and
5805 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/apt.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
5806 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5807 javascript code is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/631045&quot;&gt;no longer
5808 able to build&lt;/a&gt; because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5809 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5810 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5811 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5812 known alternative is known at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
5813
5814 &lt;p&gt;This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5815 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5816 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5817 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5818 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
5819 announced, direct connections will be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;
5820
5821 &lt;p&gt;Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5822 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5823 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5824 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5825 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
5826 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5827 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5828 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5829 the network setup changes.&lt;/p&gt;
5830
5831 &lt;p&gt;The WPAD system is documented in a
5832 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01&quot;&gt;IETF
5833 draft&lt;/a&gt; and a
5834 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia
5835 page&lt;/a&gt; for those that want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
5836 </description>
5837         </item>
5838
5839         <item>
5840                 <title>Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</title>
5841                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</link>
5842                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</guid>
5843                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
5844                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since the Lenny version of
5845 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, a
5846 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
5847 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5848 in the morning.  This is done using the
5849 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html&quot;&gt;shutdown-at-night&lt;/a&gt; Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
5850
5851 &lt;p&gt;To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5852 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
5853 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5854 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5855 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
5856 the
5857 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html&quot;&gt;nvram-wakeup&lt;/a&gt;
5858 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
5859 10 minutes.  If this isn&#39;t working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5860 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5861 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
5862
5863 &lt;p&gt;It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5864 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5865 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
5866 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I&#39;ve seen old
5867 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5868 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
5869 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.&lt;/p&gt;
5870
5871 &lt;p&gt;The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5872 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
5873 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5874 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night&lt;/tt&gt; to enable it.
5875 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?&lt;/p&gt;
5876 </description>
5877         </item>
5878
5879         <item>
5880                 <title>Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
5881                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
5882                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
5883                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Feb 2012 13:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
5884                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5885 publish the third beta version of
5886 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5887 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5888 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5889 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
5890 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5891 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
5892 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
5893
5894 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5895 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):&lt;/p&gt;
5896
5897 &lt;ul&gt;
5898
5899 &lt;li&gt;It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5900   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5901   the installation.&lt;/li&gt;
5902
5903 &lt;li&gt;Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5904   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.&lt;/li&gt;
5905
5906 &lt;li&gt;The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5907   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
5908   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.&lt;/li&gt;
5909
5910 &lt;li&gt;The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
5911   for the local system administrator is created during installation
5912   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5913   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5914   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5915   up to date on the system.&lt;/li&gt;
5916
5917 &lt;/ul&gt;
5918
5919 &lt;p&gt;The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5920 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
5921 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5922 final Squeeze release is published.&lt;/p&gt;
5923
5924 &lt;p&gt;Next weekend the project organise a
5925 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;developer
5926 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5927 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
5928 will see you there?&lt;/p&gt;
5929 </description>
5930         </item>
5931
5932         <item>
5933                 <title>Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
5934                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
5935                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
5936                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
5937                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5938 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
5939 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
5940 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5941 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
5942 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5943 work, but there are other use cases as well.&lt;/p&gt;
5944
5945 &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5946 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5947 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5948 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
5949 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
5950 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5951 not taken care of by this.&lt;/p&gt;
5952
5953 &lt;p&gt;For non-network devices, we provide the script
5954 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; which
5955 search through the &lt;tt&gt;dmesg&lt;/tt&gt; output for drivers requesting extra
5956 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5957 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5958 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
5959 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5960 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;#655507&lt;/a&gt;), to allow PXE
5961 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
5962 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5963 firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5964
5965 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5966 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5967 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5968 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
5969 initrd with extra firmware, the
5970 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; script is
5971 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5972 PXE initrd with firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
5973
5974 &lt;p&gt;Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5975 network cards working.  For this,
5976 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; is
5977 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
5978 the same way as the other firmware related tools.&lt;/p&gt;
5979
5980 &lt;p&gt;At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
5981 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5982 non-free software, and it is their choice.&lt;/p&gt;
5983
5984 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
5985 try.&lt;/p&gt;
5986 </description>
5987         </item>
5988
5989         <item>
5990                 <title>Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
5991                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
5992                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
5993                 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
5994                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The next version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
5995 / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; will include a new tool
5996 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp&lt;/tt&gt;, which can be used to quickly set up all
5997 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
5998 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.&lt;/p&gt;
5999
6000 &lt;p&gt;First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
6001 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
6002 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
6003 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
6004 this is done, log on to the central server and run
6005 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a&lt;/tt&gt; in the &lt;tt&gt;konsole&lt;/tt&gt; to use the
6006 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
6007 will look similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;
6008
6009 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6010 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
6011 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
6012 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
6013
6014 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
6015
6016 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6017 enter password: *******
6018 %
6019 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6020
6021 &lt;p&gt;After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
6022 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
6023 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
6024 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
6025 then to log into &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa&lt;/a&gt;,
6026 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
6027 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
6028 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
6029 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
6030 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
6031 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
6032 automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
6033
6034 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
6035 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;
6036
6037 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
6038 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
6039 original text, and have added it to the text now.&lt;/p&gt;
6040 </description>
6041         </item>
6042
6043         <item>
6044                 <title>Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
6045                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
6046                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
6047                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
6048                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Squeeze version of
6049 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; soon
6050 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
6051 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
6052 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
6053 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
6054 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
6055 first time.&lt;/p&gt;
6056
6057 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
6058 labeledURI with &quot;http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux&quot; as the
6059 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
6060 to see the page behind this new URL.&lt;/p&gt;
6061
6062 &lt;p&gt;An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
6063 called as &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ldapvi -ZD &#39;(cn=admin)&#39;&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to update LDAP with the
6064 new setting.&lt;/p&gt;
6065
6066 &lt;p&gt;We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
6067 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
6068 from within Iceweasel instead.&lt;/p&gt;
6069 </description>
6070         </item>
6071
6072         <item>
6073                 <title>Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
6074                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
6075                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
6076                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
6077                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
6078 the second beta version of
6079 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  If
6080 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
6081 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
6082 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
6083 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
6084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
6085 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
6086 </description>
6087         </item>
6088
6089         <item>
6090                 <title>Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</title>
6091                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
6092                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
6093                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
6094                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
6095 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ready
6096 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
6097 interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
6098
6099 &lt;P&gt;The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
6100 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
6101 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
6102 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
6103 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
6104 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
6105 wrap up its tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
6106
6107 &lt;p&gt;Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
6108 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
6109 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
6110 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
6111 because I was typing.&lt;/P&gt;
6112
6113 &lt;p&gt;The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
6114 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
6115 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
6116 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do &#39;find /&#39; to
6117 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
6118 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
6119 generate entropy.&lt;/p&gt;
6120
6121 &lt;p&gt;The fix is in
6122 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation&quot;&gt;beta1
6123 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version, and we
6124 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu&quot;&gt;welcome more testers and
6125 developers&lt;/a&gt;.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
6126 </description>
6127         </item>
6128
6129         <item>
6130                 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
6131                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
6132                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
6133                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
6134                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
6135 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
6136 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6137 up to date.  If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
6138 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6139 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6140 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6141 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6142 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6143 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
6144
6145 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6146 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
6147 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6148 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
6149
6150 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6151 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
6152 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
6153 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6154 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6155 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6156 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6157 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
6158
6159 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6160 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6161 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
6162
6163 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6164 #!/usr/bin/perl
6165 use strict;
6166 use warnings;
6167 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6168 BEGIN {
6169     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6170     my %rhelmodules = (
6171         &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
6172         );
6173     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6174         eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
6175         if ($@) {
6176             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6177             system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
6178             eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
6179         }
6180     }
6181 }
6182 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
6183
6184 upgrade_dell();
6185
6186 exit 0;
6187
6188 sub run_firmware_script {
6189     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6190     unless ($script) {
6191         print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
6192         exit 1
6193     }
6194     print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
6195
6196     if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6197         print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
6198     } else {
6199         print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
6200     }
6201 }
6202
6203 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6204     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6205     # Run firmware packages
6206     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6207         print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
6208         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
6209         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6210             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6211             run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
6212         }
6213         closedir $dh;
6214     }
6215 }
6216
6217 sub download {
6218     my $url = shift;
6219     print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
6220     system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
6221 }
6222
6223 sub upgrade_dell {
6224     my @dirs;
6225     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6226     chomp $product;
6227
6228     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6229
6230         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6231         system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
6232
6233         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6234             CLEANUP =&gt; 1
6235             );
6236         chdir($tmpdir);
6237         fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
6238         system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
6239         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
6240         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6241         my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
6242         if (@paths) {
6243             for my $url (@paths) {
6244                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6245             }
6246             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6247         } else {
6248             print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
6249             print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
6250         }
6251         chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
6252     } else {
6253         print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
6254         print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
6255     }
6256 }
6257
6258 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6259     my $path = shift;
6260     my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
6261     download($url);
6262 }
6263
6264 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6265 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6266 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6267 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6268     my $filename = shift;
6269
6270     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6271     chomp $product;
6272     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6273
6274     print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
6275
6276     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6277     my @paths;
6278     for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6279         my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
6280         my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
6281         my $oscode;
6282         if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
6283             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
6284         } else {
6285             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
6286         }
6287         if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
6288         {
6289             @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
6290         }
6291     }
6292     for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6293         my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
6294
6295         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6296         next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
6297
6298         my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
6299         for my $path (@paths) {
6300             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6301                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6302             }
6303         }
6304     }
6305     return @paths;
6306 }
6307 &lt;/pre&gt;
6308
6309 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6310 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6311 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6312 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6313 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
6314 </description>
6315         </item>
6316
6317         <item>
6318                 <title>Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</title>
6319                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</link>
6320                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</guid>
6321                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2011 19:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6322                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
6323 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
6324 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
6325 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
6326 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
6327 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
6328 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
6329 models.&lt;/p&gt;
6330
6331 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, while reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://boklaben.no/?p=220&quot;&gt;part of
6332 this debate&lt;/a&gt;, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
6333 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
6334 to a better model.  The idea is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
6335
6336 &lt;p&gt;Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
6337 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
6338 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
6339 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about
6340 36,000 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt;
6341 (1149 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The
6342 Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
6343 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
6344 distributed.&lt;/p&gt;
6345
6346 &lt;p&gt;The computer system would make it easy to:&lt;/p&gt;
6347
6348 &lt;ul&gt;
6349
6350 &lt;li&gt;Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
6351   other relevant equipment.&lt;/li&gt;
6352
6353 &lt;li&gt;Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.&lt;/li&gt;
6354
6355 &lt;/ul&gt;
6356
6357 &lt;p&gt;In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
6358 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
6359 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
6360 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
6361 books available.&lt;/p&gt;
6362
6363 &lt;p&gt;Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
6364 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
6365 libraries. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6366 </description>
6367         </item>
6368
6369         <item>
6370                 <title>Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</title>
6371                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</link>
6372                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</guid>
6373                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6374                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
6375 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
6376 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
6377 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
6378 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
6379 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
6380 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
6381 perfectly legal here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
6382
6383 &lt;p&gt;Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6384
6385 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6386 #!/bin/sh
6387 # apt-get install lsdvd
6388 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
6389 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
6390 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6391
6392 &lt;p&gt;But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
6393 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
6394 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
6395 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.&lt;/p&gt;
6396
6397 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
6398 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
6399 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
6400 back as an ISO.
6401
6402 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6403 #!/bin/sh
6404 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
6405 set -e
6406 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
6407 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
6408 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
6409 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
6410 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
6411 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6412
6413 &lt;p&gt;Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?&lt;/p&gt;
6414
6415 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
6416 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
6417 read optical media, and is called like this: &lt;tt&gt;readom dev=/dev/dvd
6418 f=image.iso&lt;/tt&gt;.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
6419 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
6420
6421 &lt;p&gt;Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
6422 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo&quot;&gt;his
6423 program python-dvdvideo&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be just what I am looking
6424 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
6425 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
6426 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
6427 </description>
6428         </item>
6429
6430         <item>
6431                 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
6432                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
6433                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
6434                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
6435                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
6436 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
6437 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
6438 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
6439 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
6440 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
6441 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  I only have time to address one
6442 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6443 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
6444
6445 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
6446 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6447 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
6448 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6449 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6450
6451 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6452 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6453 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6454 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6455 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
6456 mode.  I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6457 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
6458
6459 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6460 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  This means the only thing that is
6461 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6462 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6463 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6464 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6465 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6466 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6467 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6468 1.  It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
6469 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6470 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
6471
6472 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6473 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6474 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  When booting into
6475 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
6476 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  A problem show up when
6477 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6478 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6479 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6480 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
6481
6482 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6483 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6484 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6485 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6486 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6487 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6488 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
6489 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
6490
6491 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6492 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6493 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
6494 </description>
6495         </item>
6496
6497         <item>
6498                 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
6499                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
6500                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
6501                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6502                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6503 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6504 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6505 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6506 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6507 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6508 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6509 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6510 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6511 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6512 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6513 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6514 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
6515
6516 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6517 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6518 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6519 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6520 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6521 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6522 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6523 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6524 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
6525
6526 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6527 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6528 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6529 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
6530
6531 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6532 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6533 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6534 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6535 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6536 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6537 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6538 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6539 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6540 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6541 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6542 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6543 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6544 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
6545 </description>
6546         </item>
6547
6548         <item>
6549                 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
6550                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
6551                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
6552                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
6553                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6554 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6555 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6556 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6557 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
6558
6559 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6560 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6561 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
6562
6563 &lt;ol&gt;
6564
6565 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
6566 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6567 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6568 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6569 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6570 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6571 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6572 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
6573
6574 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6575 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6576 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6577 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6578 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6579 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6580 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6581 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6582 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6583 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6584 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6585 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6586 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
6587
6588 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6589 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
6590 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6591 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6592 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6593 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6594 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6595 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6596 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6597 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
6598
6599 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
6600 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6601 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6602 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6603 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6604 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
6605
6606 &lt;/ol&gt;
6607
6608 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6609 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6610 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
6611
6612 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6613 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6614 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
6615 </description>
6616         </item>
6617
6618         <item>
6619                 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
6620                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
6621                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
6622                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
6623                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
6624 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6625 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6626 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6627 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
6628
6629 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6630 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6631 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6632 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
6633 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6634 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
6635 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6636 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6637 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6638 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6639 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6640 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
6641
6642 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6643 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
6644 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6645 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6646 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
6647 </description>
6648         </item>
6649
6650         <item>
6651                 <title>Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</title>
6652                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</link>
6653                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</guid>
6654                 <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6655                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Reading
6656 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/&quot;&gt;the
6657 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;, I came across two highlights of interesting
6658 parts of the
6659 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA&quot;&gt;Autodesk&lt;/a&gt;
6660 and
6661 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html&quot;&gt;Microsoft
6662 Kinect&lt;/a&gt; End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6663 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
6664 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;
6665 </description>
6666         </item>
6667
6668         <item>
6669                 <title>Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</title>
6670                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</link>
6671                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</guid>
6672                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6673                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the first draft implementation of an
6674 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; for the Norwegian
6675 service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; started to
6676 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6677 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6678 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6679 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6680 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6681 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6682 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.&lt;/p&gt;
6683
6684 &lt;p&gt;Where is it?  Visit
6685 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&quot;&gt;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&lt;/a&gt;
6686 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
6687 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
6688 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;
6689 </description>
6690         </item>
6691
6692         <item>
6693                 <title>Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</title>
6694                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</link>
6695                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</guid>
6696                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6697                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6698 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; in the
6699 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian FixMyStreet service&lt;/a&gt;.
6700 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6701 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6702 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixmystreet.org.nz/&quot;&gt;New Zealand version&lt;/a&gt; of
6703 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6704 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6705 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6706 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6707 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6708 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
6709 issues with the Open311 specification.&lt;/p&gt;
6710
6711 &lt;p&gt;One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6712 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
6713 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6714 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
6715 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6716 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6717 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6718 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6719 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6720 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6721 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6722 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
6723 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
6724
6725 &lt;p&gt;A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6726 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
6727 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6728 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
6729 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6730 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6731 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6732 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6733 it.&lt;/p&gt;
6734
6735 &lt;p&gt;The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6736 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6737 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I&#39;m not
6738 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
6739 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6740 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6741 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.&lt;/p&gt;
6742
6743 &lt;p&gt;The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6744 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
6745 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
6746 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6747 and range= options.&lt;/p&gt;
6748
6749 &lt;p&gt;The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6750 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6751 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6752 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6753 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
6754 to best handle this.  I&#39;ve noticed
6755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://seeclickfix.com/open311/&quot;&gt;SeeClickFix&lt;/a&gt; added
6756 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6757 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6758 Will have to investigate this a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;
6759
6760 &lt;p&gt;My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6761 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
6762 list available via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmane.org/&quot;&gt;Gmane&lt;/a&gt; to use for
6763 discussions instead of only
6764 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;a/&gt;.  Oh,
6765 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I&#39;ve
6766 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6767 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
6768 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
6769 work like the free software project communities I am used to.&lt;/p&gt;
6770 </description>
6771         </item>
6772
6773         <item>
6774                 <title>Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</title>
6775                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</link>
6776                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</guid>
6777                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6778                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is still
6779 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6780 A few days ago the project
6781 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt;
6782 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
6783 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6784 into Gnash.&lt;/p&gt;
6785 </description>
6786         </item>
6787
6788         <item>
6789                 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
6790                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
6791                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
6792                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6793                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6794 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6795 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
6796
6797 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6798 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6799 of the British service
6800 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
6801 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6802 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6803 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
6805 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6806 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6807 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6808 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
6810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
6811 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6812 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
6813
6814 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6815 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6816 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6817 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6818 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6819 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
6820
6821 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6822 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
6823 </description>
6824         </item>
6825
6826         <item>
6827                 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
6828                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
6829                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
6830                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
6831                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6832 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6833 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6834 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6835 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6836 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6837 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6838 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6839 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6840 out which security holes were present in our free software
6841 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
6842
6843 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6844 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6845 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6846 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6847 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6848 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6849 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6850 solution.  Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
6851 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6852 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6853 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
6854 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
6855 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6856 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6857 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
6858 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
6859
6860 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6861 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6862 check out, one could look up
6863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6864 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6865 The most recent one is
6866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
6867 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6868 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
6869
6870 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6871 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
6872 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6873 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6874 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6875 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
6876
6877 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6878 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6879 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6880 RHEL is providing
6881 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
6882 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
6883 information.  I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
6884
6885 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6886 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6887 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6888 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6889 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6890 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6891 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6892 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6893 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6894 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
6895
6896 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6897 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6898 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6899 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6900 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
6901 </description>
6902         </item>
6903
6904         <item>
6905                 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
6906                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
6907                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
6908                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6909                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
6910 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
6911 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6912 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6913 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6914 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6915 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6916 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6917 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6918 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;.  The relevant output on
6919 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6920
6921 &lt;pre&gt;
6922 loaded modules:
6923 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6924 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6925 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6926 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6927 10de:03ec pata_amd
6928 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6929 1022:1103 k8temp
6930 109e:036e bttv
6931 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6932 11ab:4364 sky2
6933 &lt;/pre&gt;
6934
6935 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6936 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
6937
6938 &lt;pre&gt;
6939 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6940     echo loaded pci modules:
6941     (
6942         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6943         for address in * ; do
6944             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
6945                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6946                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
6947                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6948                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
6949                     echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
6950                 fi
6951             fi
6952         done
6953     )
6954     echo
6955 fi
6956 &lt;/pre&gt;
6957
6958 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6959 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
6960
6961 &lt;pre&gt;
6962 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6963     echo loaded usb modules:
6964     (
6965         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6966         for address in * ; do
6967             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
6968                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6969                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
6970                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6971                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
6972                     if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
6973                         echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
6974                     fi
6975                 fi
6976             fi
6977         done
6978     )
6979     echo
6980 fi
6981 &lt;/pre&gt;
6982
6983 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6984 well.&lt;/p&gt;
6985 </description>
6986         </item>
6987
6988         <item>
6989                 <title>The video format most supported in web browsers?</title>
6990                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</link>
6991                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</guid>
6992                 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
6993                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6994 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
6995 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
6996 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6997 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6998 the Wikipedia article on
6999 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;HTML5 video&lt;/a&gt;,
7000 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
7001 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
7002 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
7003 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
7004 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
7005 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
7006 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
7007 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
7008 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
7009 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
7010 Safari can install plugins to get it.&lt;/p&gt;
7011
7012 &lt;p&gt;To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
7013 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
7014 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
7015 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
7016 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, we provide first fallback to a
7017 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
7018 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
7019 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an &lt;a
7020 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/&quot;&gt;example
7021 from last week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7022
7023 &lt;p&gt;The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
7024 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
7025 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
7026 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
7027 was without royalties and license terms, check out
7028 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7029 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps.&lt;/p&gt;
7030
7031 &lt;p&gt;A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
7032 available from
7033 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos&quot;&gt;the
7034 Xiph.org wiki&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to have a look.  I&#39;m not aware of a
7035 similar list for WebM nor H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
7036
7037 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
7038 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
7039 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
7040 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
7041 </description>
7042         </item>
7043
7044         <item>
7045                 <title>Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt;</title>
7046                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</link>
7047                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</guid>
7048                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7049                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I discovered
7050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome&quot;&gt;via
7051 digi.no&lt;/a&gt; that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
7052 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html&quot;&gt;yesterday
7053 announced&lt;/a&gt; plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; in
7054 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a &quot;completely
7055 open&quot; codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
7056 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
7057 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7058 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  It is not free of cost for creators of video
7059 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
7060 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
7061 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
7062 on the Google announcement is available from
7063 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome&quot;&gt;OSnews&lt;/a&gt;.
7064 A good read. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7065
7066 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
7067 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
7068 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
7069 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
7070 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
7071 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
7072 browsers support H.264, and others support
7073 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; and
7074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmproject.org/&quot;&gt;WebM&lt;/a&gt;
7075 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diracvideo.org/&quot;&gt;Dirac&lt;/a&gt; is not really an option
7076 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
7077 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
7078 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
7079 Wikipedia keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;an
7080 updated summary&lt;/a&gt; of the current browser support.&lt;/p&gt;
7081
7082 &lt;p&gt;Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
7083 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
7084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions&quot;&gt;presents
7085 the mind set&lt;/a&gt; of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
7086 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
7087 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM&quot;&gt;presenting
7088 the issues with H.264&lt;/a&gt;. Both are worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;
7089
7090 &lt;p&gt;Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn&#39;t free,
7091 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
7092 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
7093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm&quot;&gt;todays
7094 blog post&lt;/a&gt;, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
7095 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
7096 browser while still allowing plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
7097
7098 &lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
7099 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
7100 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
7101 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
7102 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
7103 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
7104 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.&lt;/p&gt;
7105
7106 &lt;p&gt;An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
7107 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
7108 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
7109 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
7110 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
7111 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
7112 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
7113 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
7114 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
7115 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
7116 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
7117 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
7118 I guess time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;
7119
7120 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
7121 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html&quot;&gt;more
7122 background and information on the move&lt;/a&gt; it a blog post yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
7123 </description>
7124         </item>
7125
7126         <item>
7127                 <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
7128                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
7129                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
7130                 <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
7131                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After trying to
7132 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html&quot;&gt;compare
7133 Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; to
7134 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the Digistan
7135 definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
7136 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
7137 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
7138 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
7139 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
7140 reasonable time frame, I will need help.&lt;/p&gt;
7141
7142 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with this work, please visit
7143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse&quot;&gt;the
7144 wiki pages I have set up for this&lt;/a&gt;, and let me know that you want
7145 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
7146 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
7147 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
7148 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).&lt;/p&gt;
7149
7150 &lt;p&gt;The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
7151 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7152 </description>
7153         </item>
7154
7155         <item>
7156                 <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
7157                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
7158                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
7159                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
7160                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
7161 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;Free and
7162 Open Standard&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
7163 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term &quot;Open Standard&quot; has
7164 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
7165 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
7166 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
7167 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
7168
7169 &lt;p&gt;But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
7170 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
7171 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
7172 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
7173 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard&quot;&gt;wikipedia
7174 page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7175
7176 &lt;p&gt;First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
7177 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
7178 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
7179 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
7180 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
7181 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
7182 specification on equal terms.&lt;/p&gt;
7183
7184 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7185
7186 &lt;p&gt;The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
7187 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
7188 open standard:&lt;/p&gt;
7189
7190 &lt;ul&gt;
7191
7192 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7193 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7194 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
7195 (consensus or majority decision etc.).&lt;/li&gt;
7196
7197 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
7198 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
7199 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
7200 nominal fee.&lt;/li&gt;
7201
7202 &lt;li&gt;The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
7203 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
7204 free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
7205
7206 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
7207
7208 &lt;/ul&gt;
7209 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7210
7211 &lt;p&gt;Another one originates from my friends over at
7212 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkuug.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;, who coined and gathered
7213 support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;this
7214 definition&lt;/a&gt; in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
7215 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm&quot;&gt;their
7216 definition of a open standard&lt;/a&gt;.  Another from a different part of
7217 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;
7218
7219 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7220
7221 &lt;p&gt;En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:&lt;/p&gt;
7222
7223 &lt;ol&gt;
7224
7225 &lt;li&gt;Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
7226 tilgængelig.&lt;/li&gt;
7227
7228 &lt;li&gt;Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
7229 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.&lt;/li&gt;
7230
7231 &lt;li&gt;Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
7232 &quot;standardiseringsorganisation&quot;) via en åben proces.&lt;/li&gt;
7233
7234 &lt;/ol&gt;
7235
7236 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7237
7238 &lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html&quot;&gt;the
7239 definition&lt;/a&gt; from Free Software Foundation Europe.&lt;/p&gt;
7240
7241 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7242
7243 &lt;p&gt;An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is&lt;/p&gt;
7244
7245 &lt;ol&gt;
7246
7247 &lt;li&gt;subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
7248 manner equally available to all parties;&lt;/li&gt;
7249
7250 &lt;li&gt;without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
7251 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
7252 Standard themselves;&lt;/li&gt;
7253
7254 &lt;li&gt;free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
7255 any party or in any business model;&lt;/li&gt;
7256
7257 &lt;li&gt;managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
7258 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
7259 parties;&lt;/li&gt;
7260
7261 &lt;li&gt;available in multiple complete implementations by competing
7262 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
7263 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
7264
7265 &lt;/ol&gt;
7266
7267 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7268
7269 &lt;p&gt;A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
7270 its
7271 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf&quot;&gt;Open
7272 Standards Checklist&lt;/a&gt; with a fairly detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;
7273
7274 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7275 &lt;p&gt;Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7276
7277 &lt;ul&gt;
7278
7279 &lt;li&gt;Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7280   democratic:
7281
7282          &lt;ul&gt;
7283
7284          &lt;li&gt;Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7285             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7286             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7287             and managed.&lt;/li&gt;
7288
7289          &lt;li&gt;The processes must be documented and, through a known
7290             method, can be changed through input from all
7291             participants.&lt;/li&gt;
7292
7293          &lt;li&gt;The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7294             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.&lt;/li&gt;
7295
7296          &lt;li&gt;Development and management should strive for consensus,
7297             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.&lt;/li&gt;
7298
7299          &lt;li&gt;The standard specification must be open to extensive
7300             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
7301             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.&lt;/li&gt;
7302
7303          &lt;/ul&gt;
7304
7305 &lt;/li&gt;
7306
7307 &lt;/ul&gt;
7308
7309 &lt;p&gt;Use and Licensing of an Open Standard&lt;/p&gt;
7310 &lt;ul&gt;
7311
7312 &lt;li&gt;The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
7313   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
7314   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
7315   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
7316   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.&lt;/li&gt;
7317
7318 &lt;li&gt; The standard must not contain any proprietary &quot;hooks&quot; that create
7319   a technical or economic barriers&lt;/li&gt;
7320
7321 &lt;li&gt;Faithful implementations of the standard must
7322   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
7323   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
7324   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
7325   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
7326   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
7327   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
7328   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
7329   intended to function.&lt;/li&gt;
7330
7331 &lt;li&gt;It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
7332   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
7333   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.&lt;/li&gt;
7334
7335 &lt;li&gt;It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
7336   fees; also known as &quot;royalty free&quot;), worldwide, non-exclusive and
7337   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
7338   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
7339   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
7340   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
7341   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
7342   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
7343
7344       &lt;ul&gt;
7345
7346       &lt;li&gt; May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
7347         licensees&#39; patent claims essential to practice that standard
7348         (also known as a reciprocity clause)&lt;/li&gt;
7349
7350       &lt;li&gt; May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
7351         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
7352         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
7353         &quot;defensive suspension&quot; clause)&lt;/li&gt;
7354
7355       &lt;li&gt; The same licensing terms are available to every potential
7356         licensor&lt;/li&gt;
7357
7358       &lt;/ul&gt;
7359 &lt;/li&gt;
7360
7361 &lt;li&gt;The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
7362   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
7363   or restricted licensing terms&lt;/li&gt;
7364
7365 &lt;/ul&gt;
7366
7367 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7368
7369 &lt;p&gt;It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
7370 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
7371 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
7372 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
7373 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
7374 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
7375 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
7376 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
7377 Standards.&lt;/p&gt;
7378 </description>
7379         </item>
7380
7381         <item>
7382                 <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
7383                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
7384                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
7385                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
7386                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;The
7387 Digistan definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;
7388
7389 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7390
7391 &lt;p&gt;The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
7392 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
7393
7394 &lt;ol&gt;
7395
7396 &lt;li&gt;A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
7397 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
7398 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.&lt;/li&gt;
7399
7400 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7401 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7402 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7403 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
7404
7405 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
7406 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7407 distribute, and use it freely.&lt;/li&gt;
7408
7409 &lt;li&gt;The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7410 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
7411
7412 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
7413
7414 &lt;/ol&gt;
7415
7416 &lt;p&gt;The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7417 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7418 products based on the standard.&lt;/p&gt;
7419 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7420
7421 &lt;p&gt;For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7422 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
7423 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
7424 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7425 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html&quot;&gt;in
7426 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;, for those that want to see some background information.
7427 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7428 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
7429
7430 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free from vendor capture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7431
7432 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7433 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
7434 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/&quot;&gt;Xiph foundation&lt;/A&gt; is such vendor, but
7435 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7436 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7437 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
7438 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7439 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I&#39;ve
7440 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7441 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7442 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
7443 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7444 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7445 specification.  But it seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;
7446
7447 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7448
7449 &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7450 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
7451 controlled by a single vendor, it isn&#39;t, but I have not found any
7452 documentation indicating this.&lt;/p&gt;
7453
7454 &lt;p&gt;According to
7455 &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf&quot;&gt;a report&lt;/a&gt;
7456 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
7457 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
7458 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
7459 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
7460 report is correct.&lt;/p&gt;
7461
7462 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification freely available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7463
7464 &lt;p&gt;The specification for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/&quot;&gt;Ogg
7465 container format&lt;/a&gt; and both the
7466 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/&quot;&gt;Vorbis&lt;/a&gt; and
7467 &lt;a href=&quot;http://theora.org/doc/&quot;&gt;Theora&lt;/a&gt; codeces are available on
7468 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7469
7470 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7471
7472 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7473 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7474 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7475 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7476 specification compliance.
7477
7478 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7479
7480 &lt;p&gt;The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7481 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, and
7482 this is the term:&lt;p&gt;
7483
7484 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7485
7486 &lt;p&gt;This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7487 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7488 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7489 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7490 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7491 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
7492 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7493 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7494 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7495 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7496 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7497 translate it into languages other than English.&lt;/p&gt;
7498
7499 &lt;p&gt;The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7500 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.&lt;/p&gt;
7501 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7502
7503 &lt;p&gt;All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7504 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
7505 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7506 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
7507 requirement for the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
7508
7509 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalty-free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7510
7511 &lt;p&gt;There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7512 Theora format.
7513 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;
7514 and
7515 &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit&quot;&gt;Steve
7516 Jobs&lt;/a&gt; in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7517 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7518 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7519 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7520 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7521 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
7522 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.&lt;/p&gt;
7523
7524 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No constraints on re-use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7525
7526 &lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.&lt;/p&gt;
7527
7528 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7529
7530 &lt;p&gt;3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
7531 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
7532 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7533 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7534 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7535 this.&lt;/p&gt;
7536
7537 &lt;p&gt;It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7538 see if they are free and open standards.&lt;/p&gt;
7539 </description>
7540         </item>
7541
7542         <item>
7543                 <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
7544                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
7545                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
7546                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7547                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
7548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece&quot;&gt;an
7549 article&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7550 2.0 of
7551 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework&quot;&gt;European
7552 Interoperability Framework&lt;/a&gt; has been successfully lobbied by the
7553 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7554 Nothing very surprising there, given
7555 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe&quot;&gt;earlier
7556 reports&lt;/a&gt; on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7557 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
7558 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;an
7559 open standard from version 1&lt;/a&gt; was very good, and something I
7560 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7561 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the
7562 definition from Digistan&lt;/A&gt;.  Version 2 have removed the open
7563 standard definition from its content.&lt;/p&gt;
7564
7565 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7566 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7567 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7568 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
7569 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7570 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html&quot;&gt;my
7571 source&lt;/a&gt; to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
7572 background information about that story is available in
7573 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from
7574 Linux Journal in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;
7575
7576 &lt;blockquote&gt;
7577 &lt;p&gt;Lima, 8th of April, 2002&lt;br&gt;
7578 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ&lt;br&gt;
7579 General Manager of Microsoft Perú&lt;/p&gt;
7580
7581 &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir:&lt;/p&gt;
7582
7583 &lt;p&gt;First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.&lt;/p&gt;
7584
7585 &lt;p&gt;While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.&lt;/p&gt;
7586
7587 &lt;p&gt;With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call &quot;open source software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;free software&quot;, since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call &quot;commercial software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;proprietary&quot; or &quot;unfree&quot;, given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.&lt;/p&gt;
7588
7589 &lt;p&gt;It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:&lt;/p&gt;
7590
7591 &lt;p&gt;
7592 &lt;ul&gt;
7593 &lt;li&gt;Free access to public information by the citizen. &lt;/li&gt;
7594 &lt;li&gt;Permanence of public data. &lt;/li&gt;
7595 &lt;li&gt;Security of the State and citizens.&lt;/li&gt;
7596 &lt;/ul&gt;
7597 &lt;/p&gt;
7598
7599 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.&lt;/p&gt;
7600
7601 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
7602
7603 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. &lt;/p&gt;
7604
7605 &lt;p&gt;In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.&lt;/p&gt;
7606
7607 &lt;p&gt;In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
7608
7609
7610 &lt;p&gt;From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:&lt;br&gt;
7611 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
7612 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
7613 &lt;li&gt;the law does not specify which concrete software to use&lt;/li&gt;
7614 &lt;li&gt;the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought&lt;/li&gt;
7615 &lt;li&gt;the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.&lt;/li&gt;
7616
7617 &lt;/p&gt;
7618
7619 &lt;p&gt;What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.&lt;/p&gt;
7620
7621 &lt;p&gt;We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
7622
7623 &lt;p&gt;As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;
7624
7625 &lt;p&gt;Firstly, you point out that: &quot;1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7626
7627 &lt;p&gt;This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;
7628
7629 &lt;p&gt;The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).&lt;/p&gt;
7630
7631 &lt;p&gt;The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.&lt;/p&gt;
7632
7633 &lt;p&gt;It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
7634
7635 &lt;p&gt;By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office &quot;suite&quot;, under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.&lt;/p&gt;
7636
7637 &lt;p&gt;To continue; you note that:&quot; 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7638
7639 &lt;p&gt;This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding &quot;non-competitive ... practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7640
7641 &lt;p&gt;Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them &quot;a priori&quot;, but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
7642
7643 &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;
7644
7645 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms&#39; expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.&lt;/p&gt;
7646
7647 &lt;p&gt;It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: &quot;update your software to the new version&quot; (at the user&#39;s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider&#39;s judgment alone, are &quot;old&quot;; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays &quot;trapped&quot; in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).&lt;/p&gt;
7648
7649 &lt;p&gt;You add: &quot;3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7650
7651 &lt;p&gt;I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.&lt;/p&gt;
7652
7653 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
7654
7655 &lt;p&gt;In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.&lt;/p&gt;
7656
7657 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.&lt;/p&gt;
7658
7659 &lt;p&gt;It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of &quot;ad hoc&quot; software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;
7660
7661 &lt;p&gt;With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.&lt;/p&gt;
7662
7663 &lt;p&gt;Your letter continues: &quot;4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7664
7665 &lt;p&gt;Alluding in an abstract way to &quot;the dangers this can bring&quot;, without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.&lt;/p&gt;
7666
7667 &lt;p&gt;On security:&lt;/p&gt;
7668
7669 &lt;p&gt;National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or &quot;bugs&quot; (in programmers&#39; slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;
7670
7671 &lt;p&gt;What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.&lt;/p&gt;
7672
7673 &lt;p&gt;It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.&lt;/p&gt;
7674
7675 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;
7676
7677 &lt;p&gt;As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the &quot;End User License Agreement&quot; of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS&#39;&#39;, that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.&lt;/p&gt;
7678
7679 &lt;p&gt;On Intellectual Property:&lt;/p&gt;
7680
7681 &lt;p&gt;Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one&#39;s own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).&lt;/p&gt;
7682
7683 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7684
7685 &lt;p&gt;This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).&lt;/p&gt;
7686
7687 &lt;p&gt;Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.&lt;/p&gt;
7688
7689 &lt;p&gt;If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.&lt;/p&gt;
7690
7691 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7692
7693 &lt;p&gt;This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.&lt;/p&gt;
7694
7695 &lt;p&gt;In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software (&quot;blue screens of death&quot;, malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.&lt;/p&gt;
7696
7697 &lt;p&gt;You further state that: &quot;7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7698
7699 &lt;p&gt;I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.&lt;/p&gt;
7700
7701 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.&lt;/p&gt;
7702
7703 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7704
7705 &lt;p&gt;Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.&lt;/p&gt;
7706
7707 &lt;p&gt;The second argument refers to &quot;problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector&quot; This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
7708
7709 &lt;p&gt;You then say that: &quot;9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7710
7711 &lt;p&gt;This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
7712
7713 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.&lt;/p&gt;
7714
7715 &lt;p&gt;You continue by observing that: &quot;10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7716
7717 &lt;p&gt;It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.&lt;/p&gt;
7718
7719 &lt;p&gt;What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.&lt;/p&gt;
7720
7721 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7722
7723 &lt;p&gt;This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.&lt;/p&gt;
7724
7725 &lt;p&gt;You then state that: &quot;12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7726
7727 &lt;p&gt;In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn&#39;t have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That&#39;s exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.&lt;/p&gt;
7728
7729 &lt;p&gt;You end with a rhetorical question: &quot;13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn&#39;t it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
7730
7731 &lt;p&gt;We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.&lt;/p&gt;
7732
7733 &lt;p&gt;The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.&lt;/p&gt;
7734
7735 &lt;p&gt;In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.&lt;/p&gt;
7736
7737 &lt;p&gt;I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.&lt;/p&gt;
7738
7739 &lt;p&gt;Cordially,&lt;br&gt;
7740 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ&lt;br&gt;
7741 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.&lt;/p&gt;
7742 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
7743 </description>
7744         </item>
7745
7746         <item>
7747                 <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
7748                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
7749                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
7750                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7751                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago I
7752 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html&quot;&gt;wrote
7753 a bit&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;,
7754 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7755 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.&lt;/p&gt;
7756
7757 &lt;p&gt;I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7758 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7759 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
7760 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7761 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7762 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
7763 got such a great test tool available.&lt;/p&gt;
7764 </description>
7765         </item>
7766
7767         <item>
7768                 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
7769                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
7770                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
7771                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
7772                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
7773 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
7774 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
7775 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7776 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
7777 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
7778 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7779 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7780 university.&lt;/p&gt;
7781
7782 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7783 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
7784 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7785 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
7786 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7787 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7788 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7789 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
7790
7791 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
7792 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
7793
7794 &lt;ul&gt;
7795
7796 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working?  I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7797 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
7798 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
7799
7800 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
7801 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
7802
7803 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
7804 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7805 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
7806
7807 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7808 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
7809 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7810 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
7811 normally test this by playing
7812 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
7813 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
7814
7815 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
7816 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
7817
7818 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7819 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
7820
7821 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
7822 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
7823
7824 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7825 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
7826 few.&lt;/li&gt;
7827
7828 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
7829 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7830 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
7831
7832 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I&#39;m testing if the
7833 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7834 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
7835
7836 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7837 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7838 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
7839 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7840 not.&lt;/li&gt;
7841
7842 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7843 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7844 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7845 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
7846
7847 &lt;/ul&gt;
7848
7849 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7850 for the HP machines I am testing.  I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
7851 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
7852 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7853 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
7854 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
7855 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7856 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
7857 </description>
7858         </item>
7859
7860         <item>
7861                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
7862                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
7863                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
7864                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7865                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
7866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
7867 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7868 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
7869
7870 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7871 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7872 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7873 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7874 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7875 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
7876 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
7877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
7878 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
7879 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
7880 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
7881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
7882 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
7883 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7884 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7885 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7886 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
7887 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7888 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7889 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
7890
7891 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7892 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7893 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7894 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7895 If the Skolelinux foundation
7896 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
7897 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7898 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7899 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7900 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
7901 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
7902 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7903 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
7904
7905 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7906 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
7907 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7908 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7909 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
7910 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7911 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
7912 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7913 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7914 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7915 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
7916 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7917 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7918 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7919 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
7920
7921 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7922 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7923 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7924 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
7925 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7926 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7927 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7928 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
7929 BitCoins.  Check out
7930 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
7931 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
7932 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7933 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7934 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
7935
7936 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
7937 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
7938 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7939 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
7940 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
7941 </description>
7942         </item>
7943
7944         <item>
7945                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
7946                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
7947                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
7948                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7949                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
7950 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
7951 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
7952 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
7953 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7954 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7955 A blog post from
7956 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
7957 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
7958 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
7959 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
7960 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7961 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7962 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
7963
7964 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7965 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7966 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7967 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7968 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7969 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7970 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7971 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7972 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
7973 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
7974
7975 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7976 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
7977 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
7978 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7979 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7980 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7981 you can even get
7982 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
7983 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7984 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
7985 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
7986
7987 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7988 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7989 donations to the address
7990 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
7991 </description>
7992         </item>
7993
7994         <item>
7995                 <title>Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</title>
7996                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</link>
7997                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</guid>
7998                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Dec 2010 19:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7999                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
8000 student assosiation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robotica.no/&quot;&gt;Robotica
8001 Osloensis&lt;/a&gt; at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
8002 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
8003 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
8004 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
8005 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
8006 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
8007 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
8008 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
8009 operational.&lt;/p&gt;
8010
8011 &lt;p&gt;The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
8012 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
8013 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
8014 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thingiverse.com/&quot;&gt;Thingiverse&lt;/a&gt;.  I even got
8015 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
8016 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
8017 very cool 3D scanner.&lt;/p&gt;
8018 </description>
8019         </item>
8020
8021         <item>
8022                 <title>Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</title>
8023                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</link>
8024                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</guid>
8025                 <pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
8026                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo&quot;&gt;development
8028 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
8029 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
8030 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
8031 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
8032
8033 &lt;p&gt;On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
8034 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
8035 will hold its
8036 &lt;a href=&quot;http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010&quot;&gt;General Assembly
8037 for 2010&lt;/a&gt;.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
8038 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
8039 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
8040 vote this year.&lt;/p&gt;
8041 </description>
8042         </item>
8043
8044         <item>
8045                 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
8046                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
8047                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
8048                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
8049                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8050 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8051 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8052 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8053 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8054 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8055 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8056 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
8057
8058 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8059 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
8060 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8061 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8062 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8063 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8064 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
8065 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8066 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8067 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8068 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
8069
8070 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8071 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8072 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8073 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8074 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8075 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8076 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8077 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8078 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8079 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
8080 </description>
8081         </item>
8082
8083         <item>
8084                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
8085                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
8086                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
8087                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
8088                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8089 upgrade testing of the
8090 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
8091 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
8092 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8093 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
8094
8095 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
8096
8097 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8098
8099 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8100   apache2.2-bin
8101   aptdaemon
8102   baobab
8103   binfmt-support
8104   browser-plugin-gnash
8105   cheese-common
8106   cli-common
8107   cups-pk-helper
8108   dmz-cursor-theme
8109   empathy
8110   empathy-common
8111   freedesktop-sound-theme
8112   freeglut3
8113   gconf-defaults-service
8114   gdm-themes
8115   gedit-plugins
8116   geoclue
8117   geoclue-hostip
8118   geoclue-localnet
8119   geoclue-manual
8120   geoclue-yahoo
8121   gnash
8122   gnash-common
8123   gnome
8124   gnome-backgrounds
8125   gnome-cards-data
8126   gnome-codec-install
8127   gnome-core
8128   gnome-desktop-environment
8129   gnome-disk-utility
8130   gnome-screenshot
8131   gnome-search-tool
8132   gnome-session-canberra
8133   gnome-system-log
8134   gnome-themes-extras
8135   gnome-themes-more
8136   gnome-user-share
8137   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8138   gstreamer0.10-tools
8139   gtk2-engines
8140   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8141   gtk2-engines-smooth
8142   hamster-applet
8143   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8144   libapr1
8145   libaprutil1
8146   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8147   libaprutil1-ldap
8148   libart2.0-cil
8149   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8150   libboost-python1.42.0
8151   libboost-thread1.42.0
8152   libchamplain-0.4-0
8153   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8154   libcheese-gtk18
8155   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8156   libcryptui0
8157   libdiscid0
8158   libelf1
8159   libepc-1.0-2
8160   libepc-common
8161   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8162   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8163   libfreerdp0
8164   libgconf2.0-cil
8165   libgdata-common
8166   libgdata7
8167   libgdu-gtk0
8168   libgee2
8169   libgeoclue0
8170   libgexiv2-0
8171   libgif4
8172   libglade2.0-cil
8173   libglib2.0-cil
8174   libgmime2.4-cil
8175   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8176   libgnome2.24-cil
8177   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8178   libgpod-common
8179   libgpod4
8180   libgtk2.0-cil
8181   libgtkglext1
8182   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8183   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8184   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8185   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8186   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8187   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8188   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8189   libmono-security2.0-cil
8190   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8191   libmono-system2.0-cil
8192   libmtp8
8193   libmusicbrainz3-6
8194   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8195   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8196   libopal3.6.8
8197   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8198   libpt2.6.7
8199   libpython2.6
8200   librpm1
8201   librpmio1
8202   libsdl1.2debian
8203   libsrtp0
8204   libssh-4
8205   libtelepathy-farsight0
8206   libtelepathy-glib0
8207   libtidy-0.99-0
8208   media-player-info
8209   mesa-utils
8210   mono-2.0-gac
8211   mono-gac
8212   mono-runtime
8213   nautilus-sendto
8214   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8215   p7zip-full
8216   pkg-config
8217   python-aptdaemon
8218   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8219   python-axiom
8220   python-beautifulsoup
8221   python-bugbuddy
8222   python-clientform
8223   python-coherence
8224   python-configobj
8225   python-crypto
8226   python-cupshelpers
8227   python-elementtree
8228   python-epsilon
8229   python-evolution
8230   python-feedparser
8231   python-gdata
8232   python-gdbm
8233   python-gst0.10
8234   python-gtkglext1
8235   python-gtksourceview2
8236   python-httplib2
8237   python-louie
8238   python-mako
8239   python-markupsafe
8240   python-mechanize
8241   python-nevow
8242   python-notify
8243   python-opengl
8244   python-openssl
8245   python-pam
8246   python-pkg-resources
8247   python-pyasn1
8248   python-pysqlite2
8249   python-rdflib
8250   python-serial
8251   python-tagpy
8252   python-twisted-bin
8253   python-twisted-conch
8254   python-twisted-core
8255   python-twisted-web
8256   python-utidylib
8257   python-webkit
8258   python-xdg
8259   python-zope.interface
8260   remmina
8261   remmina-plugin-data
8262   remmina-plugin-rdp
8263   remmina-plugin-vnc
8264   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8265   rhythmbox-plugins
8266   rpm-common
8267   rpm2cpio
8268   seahorse-plugins
8269   shotwell
8270   software-center
8271   system-config-printer-udev
8272   telepathy-gabble
8273   telepathy-mission-control-5
8274   telepathy-salut
8275   tomboy
8276   totem
8277   totem-coherence
8278   totem-mozilla
8279   totem-plugins
8280   transmission-common
8281   xdg-user-dirs
8282   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8283   xserver-xephyr
8284 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8285
8286 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8287
8288 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8289   cheese
8290   ekiga
8291   eog
8292   epiphany-extensions
8293   evolution-exchange
8294   fast-user-switch-applet
8295   file-roller
8296   gcalctool
8297   gconf-editor
8298   gdm
8299   gedit
8300   gedit-common
8301   gnome-games
8302   gnome-games-data
8303   gnome-nettool
8304   gnome-system-tools
8305   gnome-themes
8306   gnuchess
8307   gucharmap
8308   guile-1.8-libs
8309   libavahi-ui0
8310   libdmx1
8311   libgalago3
8312   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8313   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8314   liblircclient0
8315   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8316   libspeexdsp1
8317   libsvga1
8318   rhythmbox
8319   seahorse
8320   sound-juicer
8321   system-config-printer
8322   totem-common
8323   transmission-gtk
8324   vinagre
8325   vino
8326 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8327
8328 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8329
8330 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8331   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8332 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8333
8334 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8335
8336 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8337 [nothing]
8338 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8339
8340 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
8341
8342 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8343
8344 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8345   ksmserver
8346 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8347
8348 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8349
8350 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8351   kwin
8352   network-manager-kde
8353 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8354
8355 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8356
8357 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8358   arts
8359   dolphin
8360   freespacenotifier
8361   google-gadgets-gst
8362   google-gadgets-xul
8363   kappfinder
8364   kcalc
8365   kcharselect
8366   kde-core
8367   kde-plasma-desktop
8368   kde-standard
8369   kde-window-manager
8370   kdeartwork
8371   kdeartwork-emoticons
8372   kdeartwork-style
8373   kdeartwork-theme-icon
8374   kdebase
8375   kdebase-apps
8376   kdebase-workspace
8377   kdebase-workspace-bin
8378   kdebase-workspace-data
8379   kdeeject
8380   kdelibs
8381   kdeplasma-addons
8382   kdeutils
8383   kdewallpapers
8384   kdf
8385   kfloppy
8386   kgpg
8387   khelpcenter4
8388   kinfocenter
8389   konq-plugins-l10n
8390   konqueror-nsplugins
8391   kscreensaver
8392   kscreensaver-xsavers
8393   ktimer
8394   kwrite
8395   libgle3
8396   libkde4-ruby1.8
8397   libkonq5
8398   libkonq5-templates
8399   libnetpbm10
8400   libplasma-ruby
8401   libplasma-ruby1.8
8402   libqt4-ruby1.8
8403   marble-data
8404   marble-plugins
8405   netpbm
8406   nuvola-icon-theme
8407   plasma-dataengines-workspace
8408   plasma-desktop
8409   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8410   plasma-runners-addons
8411   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8412   plasma-scriptengine-python
8413   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8414   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8415   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8416   plasma-scriptengines
8417   plasma-wallpapers-addons
8418   plasma-widget-folderview
8419   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8420   ruby
8421   sweeper
8422   update-notifier-kde
8423   xscreensaver-data-extra
8424   xscreensaver-gl
8425   xscreensaver-gl-extra
8426   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8427 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8428
8429 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8430
8431 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8432   ark
8433   google-gadgets-common
8434   google-gadgets-qt
8435   htdig
8436   kate
8437   kdebase-bin
8438   kdebase-data
8439   kdepasswd
8440   kfind
8441   klipper
8442   konq-plugins
8443   konqueror
8444   ksysguard
8445   ksysguardd
8446   libarchive1
8447   libcln6
8448   libeet1
8449   libeina-svn-06
8450   libggadget-1.0-0b
8451   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
8452   libgps19
8453   libkdecorations4
8454   libkephal4
8455   libkonq4
8456   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8457   libkscreensaver5
8458   libksgrd4
8459   libksignalplotter4
8460   libkunitconversion4
8461   libkwineffects1a
8462   libmarblewidget4
8463   libntrack-qt4-1
8464   libntrack0
8465   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8466   libplasmaclock4a
8467   libplasmagenericshell4
8468   libprocesscore4a
8469   libprocessui4a
8470   libqalculate5
8471   libqedje0a
8472   libqtruby4shared2
8473   libqzion0a
8474   libruby1.8
8475   libscim8c2a
8476   libsmokekdecore4-3
8477   libsmokekdeui4-3
8478   libsmokekfile3
8479   libsmokekhtml3
8480   libsmokekio3
8481   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8482   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8483   libsmokekparts3
8484   libsmokektexteditor3
8485   libsmokekutils3
8486   libsmokenepomuk3
8487   libsmokephonon3
8488   libsmokeplasma3
8489   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8490   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8491   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8492   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8493   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8494   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8495   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8496   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8497   libsmokeqttest4-3
8498   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8499   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8500   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8501   libsmokesolid3
8502   libsmokesoprano3
8503   libtaskmanager4a
8504   libtidy-0.99-0
8505   libweather-ion4a
8506   libxklavier16
8507   libxxf86misc1
8508   okteta
8509   oxygencursors
8510   plasma-dataengines-addons
8511   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8512   plasma-widget-lancelot
8513   plasma-widgets-addons
8514   plasma-widgets-workspace
8515   polkit-kde-1
8516   ruby1.8
8517   systemsettings
8518   update-notifier-common
8519 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8520
8521 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8522 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8523 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8524 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
8525 </description>
8526         </item>
8527
8528         <item>
8529                 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
8530                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
8531                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
8532                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8533                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
8534 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
8535 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8536 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8537 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8538 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8539 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8540 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8541 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
8542
8543 &lt;p&gt;I found
8544 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
8545 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8546 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8547 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8548 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8549 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
8550
8551 &lt;pre&gt;
8552 #!/bin/sh
8553
8554 # Based on
8555 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8556
8557 set -e
8558 set -x
8559
8560 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
8561     echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
8562     exit 1
8563 else
8564     host=&quot;$1&quot;
8565 fi
8566
8567 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8568     echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
8569     exit 1
8570 fi
8571
8572 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8573 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
8574 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
8575 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8576
8577 img=$host.img
8578 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8579 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8580
8581 parted $img mklabel msdos
8582 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8583 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8584 parted $img set 1 boot on
8585
8586 modprobe dm-mod
8587 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8588 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8589
8590 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8591 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8592 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8593
8594 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8595 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8596 &lt;/pre&gt;
8597
8598 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8599 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
8600
8601 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8602 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8603 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8604 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
8605 </description>
8606         </item>
8607
8608         <item>
8609                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
8610                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
8611                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
8612                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
8613                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
8614 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
8615 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8616 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
8617
8618 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8619 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8620 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
8621
8622 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
8623
8624 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8625
8626 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8627   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8628   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8629   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8630   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8631   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8632   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8633   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8634   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8635   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8636   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8637   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8638   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8639   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8640   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8641   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
8642   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
8643   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8644   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
8645   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8646   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8647   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
8648   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8649   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8650   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8651   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8652   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8653   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8654   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8655   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8656   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
8657   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
8658   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8659   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8660   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
8661   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
8662   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8663   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8664   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8665   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
8666   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8667   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8668   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8669   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8670   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8671   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8672   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8673   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8674   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8675   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8676   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8677   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8678   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8679   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8680   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8681   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8682   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8683   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8684   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8685   zip
8686 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8687
8688 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8689
8690 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8691   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8692   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8693   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8694   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8695   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8696   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8697   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8698   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
8699   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8700   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
8701   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8702   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8703   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8704   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8705   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8706   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
8707   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8708   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8709   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8710   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8711   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
8712   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
8713   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8714   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
8715   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8716   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8717   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8718   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8719   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8720 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8721
8722 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8723
8724 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8725   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8726 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8727
8728 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8729
8730 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8731 [nothing]
8732 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8733
8734 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
8735
8736 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8737
8738 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8739   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
8740   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8741   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8742   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8743   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8744   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8745   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8746   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8747   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8748   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8749   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8750   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8751   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8752   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8753   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
8754   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8755   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8756   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8757   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8758   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8759   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8760   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8761   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8762   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8763   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8764   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8765   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8766   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8767   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8768   ttf-sazanami-gothic
8769 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8770
8771 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
8772
8773 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8774   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8775   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8776   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8777   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8778   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8779   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8780   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8781   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8782   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8783   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8784   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8785   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8786   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8787   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8788   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8789   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8790   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
8791   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8792   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8793   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
8794   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8795   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8796   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8797   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8798   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8799   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8800   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8801   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
8802   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
8803   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8804   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8805   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8806   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8807 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8808
8809 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8810
8811 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8812   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8813   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8814   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8815   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8816   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8817   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8818   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8819 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8820
8821 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
8822
8823 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
8824   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8825 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8826 </description>
8827         </item>
8828
8829         <item>
8830                 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
8831                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
8832                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
8833                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8834                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
8835 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
8836 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
8837 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
8838 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8839 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8840 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8841 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
8842
8843 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8844 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
8845 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
8846 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8847 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
8848 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
8849 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8850 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8851 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8852 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
8853 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8854 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8855 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
8856 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
8857 </description>
8858         </item>
8859
8860         <item>
8861                 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
8862                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
8863                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
8864                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
8865                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8866
8867 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
8868 3D linked in from
8869 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
8870 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8871 </description>
8872         </item>
8873
8874         <item>
8875                 <title>Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</title>
8876                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</link>
8877                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</guid>
8878                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Nov 2010 11:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
8879                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8880 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; DVD, which is
8881 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8882 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
8883 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8884 working using this DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
8885
8886 &lt;p&gt;The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8887 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
8888 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8889 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
8890 a patch for debian-cd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/601203&quot;&gt;BTS
8891 report #601203&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and since this change was applied to
8892 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.&lt;/p&gt;
8893
8894 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8895 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8896 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8897 Debian archive.&lt;/p&gt;
8898
8899 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8900 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
8901 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
8902 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
8903 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8904 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
8905 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8906 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8907 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8908 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8909 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8910 free X driver should work.&lt;/p&gt;
8911
8912 &lt;p&gt;With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8913 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8914 DVD more useful again.&lt;/p&gt;
8915 </description>
8916         </item>
8917
8918         <item>
8919                 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
8920                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
8921                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
8922                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
8923                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
8924
8925 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
8926 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
8927 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
8928 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8929 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
8930 :)&lt;/p&gt;
8931
8932 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8933 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8934 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8935 It is called
8936 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
8937 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
8938 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8939 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8940 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8941 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
8942
8943 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
8944 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
8945 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
8946 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8947 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
8948 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8949 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8950 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
8951 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8952 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
8953 </description>
8954         </item>
8955
8956         <item>
8957                 <title>Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</title>
8958                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</link>
8959                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</guid>
8960                 <pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
8961                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is the
8962 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8963 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8964 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8965 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8966 AVM2 flash files.&lt;/p&gt;
8967
8968 &lt;p&gt;To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8969 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;a pledge&lt;/a&gt; with the
8970 following text:&lt;/P&gt;
8971
8972 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
8973
8974   &lt;p&gt;&quot;I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8975   only if 10 other people will do the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
8976
8977   &lt;p&gt;- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer&lt;/p&gt;
8978
8979   &lt;p&gt;Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010&lt;/p&gt;
8980
8981   &lt;p&gt;The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8982   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8983   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8984   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8985   days. The project web page is available from
8986   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8987   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8988   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.&lt;/p&gt;
8989
8990   &lt;p&gt;The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8991   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8992   to get this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;
8993
8994   &lt;p&gt;The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8995   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&quot;&gt;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;
8996
8997 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8998
8999 &lt;p&gt;I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
9000 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
9001 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
9002 :)&lt;/p&gt;
9003 </description>
9004         </item>
9005
9006         <item>
9007                 <title>First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</title>
9008                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</link>
9009                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
9010                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9011                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
9012 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
9013 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
9014 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
9015 I&#39;ve started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
9016 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
9017 robots.&lt;/p&gt;
9018
9019 &lt;p&gt;The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
9020 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
9021 a few less important features too.&lt;/p&gt;
9022
9023 &lt;p&gt;Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
9024 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
9025 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
9026 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9027
9028 &lt;p&gt;Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
9029 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
9030 source or binary package:&lt;/p&gt;
9031
9032 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
9033 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9034 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9035 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9036 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9037
9038 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
9039 please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
9040 </description>
9041         </item>
9042
9043         <item>
9044                 <title>Links for 2010-10-03</title>
9045                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</link>
9046                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</guid>
9047                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9048                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
9049
9050 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars&quot;&gt;There
9051 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9052
9053 &lt;li&gt;Scanner looking under clothes
9054 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/&quot;&gt;has
9055 already been misused at Heathrow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
9056
9057 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell&quot;&gt;Landell
9058 Webcasting&lt;/a&gt; - interesting alternative for
9059 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;DVSwitch&lt;/a&gt; with
9060 simple setup.
9061
9062 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9063 </description>
9064         </item>
9065
9066         <item>
9067                 <title>Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</title>
9068                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</link>
9069                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</guid>
9070                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
9071                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
9072 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
9073 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
9074 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
9075 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
9076 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
9077 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
9078 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
9079 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
9080
9081 &lt;p&gt;On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
9082 written:&lt;/p&gt;
9083
9084 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9085 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under AT&amp;T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
9086 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
9087 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
9088 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
9089 AT&amp;T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.&lt;/p&gt;
9090
9091 &lt;p&gt;No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
9092 standard.&lt;/p&gt;
9093 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9094
9095 &lt;p&gt;In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
9096 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
9097 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
9098 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.&lt;/p&gt;
9099
9100 &lt;p&gt;This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
9101 read
9102 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA&quot;&gt;Why
9103 Our Civilization&#39;s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
9104 MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
9105 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;H.264 Is Not
9106 The Sort Of Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps to learn more about
9107 the issue.  The solution is to support the
9108 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
9109 open standards&lt;/a&gt; for video, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg
9110 Theora&lt;/a&gt;, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.&lt;/p&gt;
9111 </description>
9112         </item>
9113
9114         <item>
9115                 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
9116                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
9117                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
9118                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
9119                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
9120 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9121 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9122 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9123 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9124 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9125 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
9126
9127 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9128 («&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
9129 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9130 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
9131 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
9132 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9133 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9134 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9135 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
9136
9137 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9138 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9139 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9140 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9141 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9142 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9143 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9144 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9145 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9146 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
9147
9148 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9149 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9150 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9151 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9152 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9153 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9154 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9155 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9156 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9157 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9158 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
9159 </description>
9160         </item>
9161
9162         <item>
9163                 <title>My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</title>
9164                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</link>
9165                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
9166                 <pubDate>Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
9167                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
9168 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9169 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9170 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9171 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9172 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
9173 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9174 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9175 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9176 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9177 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9178 drive around.&lt;/p&gt;
9179
9180 &lt;p&gt;The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9181 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:&lt;/p&gt;
9182
9183 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9184 use Spykee;
9185 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9186 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9187 my $spykee = Spykee-&gt;new();
9188 $spykee-&gt;contact($host, &quot;admin&quot;, &quot;admin&quot;);
9189 $spykee-&gt;left();
9190 sleep 2;
9191 $spykee-&gt;right();
9192 sleep 2;
9193 $spykee-&gt;forward();
9194 sleep 2;
9195 $spykee-&gt;back();
9196 sleep 2;
9197 $spykee-&gt;stop();
9198 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9199
9200 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9201 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9202 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I&#39;ve implemented several of
9203 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9204 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
9205 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
9206 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
9207 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
9208 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
9209 going. :).&lt;/p&gt;
9210
9211 &lt;p&gt;Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
9212 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
9213 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/&quot;&gt;the NUUG wiki&lt;/a&gt; for
9214 those that want to check back later to find it.&lt;/p&gt;
9215 </description>
9216         </item>
9217
9218         <item>
9219                 <title>Broken hard link handling with sshfs</title>
9220                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
9221                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
9222                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9223                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
9224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html&quot;&gt;previous
9225 post about sshfs&lt;/a&gt;.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
9226 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
9227 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
9228 a link count &gt;1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
9229 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:&lt;/p&gt;
9230
9231 &lt;pre&gt;
9232 % ln foo bar
9233 ln: creating hard link `bar&#39; =&gt; `foo&#39;: Function not implemented
9234 %
9235 &lt;/pre&gt;
9236
9237 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
9238 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
9239 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
9240 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
9241 nevertheless. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9242
9243 &lt;p&gt;The latest version of the file system test code is available via
9244 git from
9245 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9246 </description>
9247         </item>
9248
9249         <item>
9250                 <title>Broken umask handling with sshfs</title>
9251                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
9252                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
9253                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9254                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My file system sematics program
9255 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;presented
9256 a few days ago&lt;/a&gt; is very useful to verify that a file system can
9257 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I&#39;m
9258 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
9259 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
9260 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
9261 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
9262 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
9263 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
9264 script:&lt;/p&gt;
9265
9266 &lt;pre&gt;
9267 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
9268   mode_t retval = 0;
9269   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
9270   if (-1 != fd) {
9271     unlink(name);
9272     struct stat statbuf;
9273     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &amp;statbuf)) {
9274       retval = statbuf.st_mode &amp; 0x1ff;
9275     }
9276     close(fd);
9277   }
9278   return retval;
9279 }
9280
9281 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9282 int test_umask(void) {
9283   printf(&quot;info: testing umask effect on file creation\n&quot;);
9284
9285   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
9286   mode_t newmode;
9287   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
9288     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n&quot;,
9289            newmode);
9290   }
9291   umask(007);
9292   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
9293     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n&quot;,
9294            newmode);
9295   }
9296
9297   umask (orig_umask);
9298   return 0;
9299 }
9300
9301 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9302   [...]
9303   test_umask();
9304   return 0;
9305 }
9306 &lt;/pre&gt;
9307
9308 &lt;p&gt;Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:&lt;/p&gt;
9309
9310 &lt;pre&gt;
9311 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9312 info: testing symlink creation
9313 info: testing subdirectory creation
9314 info: testing fcntl locking
9315   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9316   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9317   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9318   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9319   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9320   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9321 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9322 &lt;/pre&gt;
9323
9324 &lt;p&gt;When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9325 result:&lt;/p&gt;
9326
9327 &lt;pre&gt;
9328 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9329 info: testing symlink creation
9330 info: testing subdirectory creation
9331 info: testing fcntl locking
9332   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9333   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9334   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9335   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9336   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9337   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9338 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9339   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
9340   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
9341 &lt;/pre&gt;
9342
9343 &lt;p&gt;So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9344 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9345 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
9346
9347 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
9348 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/594498&quot;&gt;BTS report #594498&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9349
9350 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9351 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9353 </description>
9354         </item>
9355
9356         <item>
9357                 <title>Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</title>
9358                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</link>
9359                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</guid>
9360                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9361                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9362 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html&quot;&gt;how
9363 to crush dissent&lt;/a&gt; matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9364 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9365 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9366 long time.&lt;/p&gt;
9367 </description>
9368         </item>
9369
9370         <item>
9371                 <title>No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</title>
9372                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</link>
9373                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</guid>
9374                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Aug 2010 20:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
9375                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9376 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9377 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
9378 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9379 generated configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
9380
9381 &lt;p&gt;What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
9382 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9383 without any manual configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
9384
9385 &lt;p&gt;This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9386 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
9387 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9388 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9389 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9390 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
9391 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9392 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
9393 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
9394 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9395 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9396 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9397 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
9398 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9399 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9400 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
9401 use.&lt;/p&gt;
9402
9403 &lt;p&gt;How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
9404 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9405 working properly out of the box:&lt;/p&gt;
9406
9407 &lt;ul&gt;
9408 &lt;li&gt;IP address/netmask and DNS server.&lt;/li&gt;
9409 &lt;li&gt;Web proxy URL.&lt;/li&gt;
9410 &lt;li&gt;LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).&lt;/li&gt;
9411 &lt;li&gt;Kerberos server for PAM password checking.&lt;/li&gt;
9412 &lt;li&gt;SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
9413 &lt;li&gt;Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
9414 &lt;li&gt;Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
9415 &lt;/ul&gt;
9416
9417 &lt;p&gt;(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)&lt;/p&gt;
9418
9419 &lt;p&gt;The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
9420 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
9421 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
9422 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
9423 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
9424
9425 &lt;p&gt;The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
9426 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
9427 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
9428 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
9429 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
9430 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
9431 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
9432 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.&lt;/p&gt;
9433
9434 &lt;p&gt;The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
9435 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
9436 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
9437 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
9438 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
9439 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
9440 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
9441 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
9442 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
9443 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
9444 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
9445 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9446 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
9447 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I&#39;ve been unable to find a way to
9448 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
9449 current DNS domain is used.&lt;/p&gt;
9450
9451 &lt;p&gt;For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
9452 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
9453 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
9454 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
9455 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
9456 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
9457 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
9458 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
9459 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
9460 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
9461 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
9462 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
9463 should switch those to use sssd too?&lt;/p&gt;
9464
9465 &lt;p&gt;The user&#39;s SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9466 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
9467 consulted to look for the user&#39;s LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9468 attribute is used if found.  If it isn&#39;t found, the home directory
9469 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
9470 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9471 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9472 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
9473 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
9474 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9475 do for now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9476
9477 &lt;p&gt;This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9478 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9479 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
9480 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9481 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9482 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
9483
9484 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9485 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9486
9487 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9488 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9489 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
9490 implement it for Debian Edu. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9491 </description>
9492         </item>
9493
9494         <item>
9495                 <title>Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</title>
9496                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</link>
9497                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</guid>
9498                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Aug 2010 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
9499                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9500 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9501 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
9502 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9503 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9504 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
9505 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.&lt;/p&gt;
9506
9507 &lt;p&gt;The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9508 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9509 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9510 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
9511 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9512 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9513 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.&lt;/p&gt;
9514
9515 &lt;p&gt;As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9516 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9517 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9518 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9519 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:&lt;/p&gt;
9520
9521 &lt;pre&gt;
9522 /*
9523  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
9524  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9525  * directory.
9526  * License: GPL v2 or later
9527  *
9528  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9529  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9530 */
9531
9532 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
9533 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
9534 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
9535
9536 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9537
9538 #include &amp;lt;errno.h&gt;
9539 #include &amp;lt;fcntl.h&gt;
9540 #include &amp;lt;stdio.h&gt;
9541 #include &amp;lt;string.h&gt;
9542 #include &amp;lt;stdlib.h&gt;
9543 #include &amp;lt;sys/file.h&gt;
9544 #include &amp;lt;sys/stat.h&gt;
9545 #include &amp;lt;sys/types.h&gt;
9546 #include &amp;lt;unistd.h&gt;
9547
9548 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9549 /*
9550  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9551  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
9552  * below.
9553  * See also &amp;lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 &gt;.
9554  */
9555 #include &amp;lt;sqlite3.h&gt;
9556 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
9557   &quot;CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); &quot;
9558 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9559   char *zErrMsg;
9560   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
9561   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
9562   unlink(name);
9563   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &amp;db);
9564   if( rc ){
9565     printf(&quot;error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n&quot;, name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9566     sqlite3_close(db);
9567     return -1;
9568   }
9569
9570   /* create tables */
9571   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &amp;zErrMsg);
9572   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9573     printf(&quot;error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n&quot;, zErrMsg);
9574     sqlite3_close(db);
9575     return -1;
9576   }
9577   printf(&quot;info: sqlite worked\n&quot;);
9578   sqlite3_close(db);
9579   return 0;
9580 }
9581 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9582
9583 /*
9584  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
9585  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
9586  * done in the sqlite3 library.
9587  * See also
9588  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html&gt; and the
9589  * POSIX specification
9590  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html&gt;.
9591  */
9592 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9593   struct flock fl;
9594   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
9595   unlink(name);
9596   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
9597   printf(&quot;info: testing fcntl locking\n&quot;);
9598
9599   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9600   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
9601   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9602   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9603   fl.l_len    = 1;
9604   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9605   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9606
9607   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
9608   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9609   fl.l_len    = 510;
9610   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9611   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9612
9613   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9614   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9615   fl.l_len    = 1;
9616   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9617   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9618
9619   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9620   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9621   fl.l_len    = 1;
9622   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
9623   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9624
9625   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
9626   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9627   fl.l_len    = 510;
9628   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9629
9630   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
9631   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9632   fl.l_len    = 2;
9633   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9634   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
9635
9636   close(fd);
9637   return 0;
9638 }
9639
9640 /*
9641  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9642  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9643  * Mounting with option &#39;sync&#39; seem to solve this problem while
9644  * slowing down file operations.
9645  */
9646 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9647 #define LEVELS 5
9648   char *path = strdup(&quot;test&quot;);
9649   char *dirs[LEVELS];
9650   int level;
9651   printf(&quot;info: testing subdirectory creation\n&quot;);
9652   for (level = 0; level &amp;lt; LEVELS; level++) {
9653     char *newpath = NULL;
9654     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
9655       printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create directory &#39;%s&#39;: %s\n&quot;,
9656              path, strerror(errno));
9657       break;
9658     }
9659     asprintf(&amp;newpath, &quot;%s/%s&quot;, path, &quot;test&quot;);
9660     free(path);
9661     path = newpath;
9662   }
9663   return 0;
9664 }
9665
9666 /*
9667  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
9668  * KDE.
9669  */
9670 int test_symlinks(void) {
9671   printf(&quot;info: testing symlink creation\n&quot;);
9672   unlink(&quot;symlink&quot;);
9673   if (-1 == symlink(&quot;file&quot;, &quot;symlink&quot;))
9674     printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create symlink\n&quot;);
9675   return 0;
9676 }
9677
9678 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9679   printf(&quot;Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n&quot;);
9680   test_symlinks();
9681   test_subdirectory_creation();
9682 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9683   test_sqlite_open();
9684 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9685   test_gcompris_locking();
9686   return 0;
9687 }
9688 &lt;/pre&gt;
9689
9690 &lt;p&gt;When everything is working, it should print something like
9691 this:&lt;/p&gt;
9692
9693 &lt;pre&gt;
9694 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9695 info: testing symlink creation
9696 info: testing subdirectory creation
9697 info: sqlite worked
9698 info: testing fcntl locking
9699   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9700   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9701   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9702   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9703   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9704   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9705 &lt;/pre&gt;
9706
9707 &lt;p&gt;I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9708 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9709 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9710 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
9711 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9712 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9713 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9714 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.&lt;/p&gt;
9715
9716 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9717 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9718
9719 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9720 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9721 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9722 </description>
9723         </item>
9724
9725         <item>
9726                 <title>Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</title>
9727                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
9728                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
9729                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9730                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I
9731 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html&quot;&gt;tried
9732 to install&lt;/a&gt; a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9733 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9734 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9735 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9736 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9737 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9738 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9739 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.&lt;/p&gt;
9740
9741 &lt;p&gt;With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9742 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9743 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9744 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
9745 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
9746 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9747 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
9748 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9749 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9750 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
9751 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9752 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
9753 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9754 gave it a IP address.&lt;/p&gt;
9755
9756 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9757 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
9758 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9759 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9760 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9761 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9762 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9763 uppercase version of $domain.&lt;/p&gt;
9764
9765 &lt;p&gt;So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
9766 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9767 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9768 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
9769 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9770 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(&lt;/p&gt;
9771
9772 &lt;p&gt;With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9773 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9774 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9775 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
9776 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9777 with UID and GID values.&lt;/p&gt;
9778
9779 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9780 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
9781 </description>
9782         </item>
9783
9784         <item>
9785                 <title>Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</title>
9786                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</link>
9787                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</guid>
9788                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
9789                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9790 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9791 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9792 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9793 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9794 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9795 servers.&lt;/p&gt;
9796
9797 &lt;p&gt;I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9798 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9799 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9800 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9801 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9802 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9803 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9804 .uio.no.&lt;/p&gt;
9805
9806 &lt;p&gt;This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9807 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9808 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9809 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9810 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9811 university servers.&lt;/p&gt;
9812
9813 &lt;p&gt;My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9814 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9815 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9816 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9817 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9818 uses.&lt;/p&gt;
9819 </description>
9820         </item>
9821
9822         <item>
9823                 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
9824                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
9825                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
9826                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
9827                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
9828 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
9829 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;.  A few packages
9830 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9831 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9832 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
9833
9834 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
9835 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
9836 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9837 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9838 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9839 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9840 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9841 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
9842
9843 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
9844
9845 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
9846 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9847  perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
9848   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9849 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9850  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9851 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
9852
9853 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9854 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
9855 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9856 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9857 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9858 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9859 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9860 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
9861
9862 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
9863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
9864 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
9865 dependencies
9866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
9867 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9868
9869 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9870 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
9871 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
9872 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9873 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9874 it.&lt;/p&gt;
9875 </description>
9876         </item>
9877
9878         <item>
9879                 <title>First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</title>
9880                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</link>
9881                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</guid>
9882                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
9883                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
9884 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
9885 completed.&lt;/p&gt;
9886
9887 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9888 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
9889 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
9890 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
9891 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
9892 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
9893 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
9894 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
9895 language of choice, please let us know too.&lt;/p&gt;
9896
9897 &lt;p&gt;In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
9898 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
9899 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;
9900
9901 &lt;p&gt;The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
9902 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
9903 much.&lt;/p&gt;
9904
9905 &lt;p&gt;Changes compared to the lenny based version&lt;/p&gt;
9906
9907 &lt;ul&gt;
9908 &lt;li&gt;Everything from Debian Squeeze
9909 &lt;ul&gt;
9910   &lt;li&gt;Desktop environment KDE 4.4 =&gt; the new KDE desktop in
9911          combination with some new artwork
9912   &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
9913   &lt;li&gt;OpenOffice.org 3.2
9914   &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
9915   &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
9916   &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
9917   &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
9918   &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
9919   &lt;li&gt;3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
9920   &lt;li&gt;Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
9921 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9922 &lt;li&gt;Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
9923     Enabled for:
9924 &lt;ul&gt;
9925   &lt;li&gt;PAM
9926   &lt;li&gt;LDAP
9927   &lt;li&gt;IMAP
9928   &lt;li&gt;SMTP (sender verification)
9929 &lt;/ul&gt;
9930 &lt;/li&gt;
9931 &lt;li&gt;New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.&lt;/li&gt;
9932 &lt;li&gt;Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
9933     fetched from LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
9934 &lt;li&gt;New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.&lt;/li&gt;
9935 &lt;li&gt;General cleanup (not finished)&lt;/li&gt;
9936 &lt;/ul&gt;
9937 &lt;p&gt;The following features are not working as they should&lt;/p&gt;
9938
9939 &lt;ul&gt;
9940 &lt;li&gt;No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
9941     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
9942     for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
9943 &lt;li&gt;DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
9944     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
9945     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.&lt;/li&gt;
9946 &lt;li&gt;The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
9947 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.&lt;/li&gt;
9948 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.&lt;/li&gt;
9949 &lt;li&gt;Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
9950     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
9951 &lt;li&gt;The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
9952     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
9953     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.&lt;/li&gt;
9954 &lt;li&gt;Some packages lack translations. See
9955     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
9956     and help out with translations.&lt;/li&gt;
9957 &lt;/ul&gt;
9958
9959 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
9960
9961 &lt;ul&gt;
9962 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9963 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9964 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9965 &lt;/ul&gt;
9966 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch dvd release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
9967
9968 &lt;ul&gt;
9969 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9970 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
9971 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9972 &lt;/ul&gt;
9973
9974 &lt;p&gt;There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
9975 get closer to the final release.&lt;/p&gt;
9976
9977 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
9978
9979 &lt;ul&gt;
9980 &lt;li&gt;3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9981 &lt;li&gt;22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9982 &lt;/ul&gt;
9983
9984 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
9985 &lt;ul&gt;
9986 &lt;li&gt;c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9987 &lt;li&gt;2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
9988 &lt;/ul&gt;
9989 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs:
9990 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla&lt;/p&gt;
9991
9992 &lt;p&gt;Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/p&gt;
9993 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9994 </description>
9995         </item>
9996
9997         <item>
9998                 <title>One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</title>
9999                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
10000                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
10001                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10002                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
10003 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
10004 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
10005 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
10006 getting rid of password questions one at the time.&lt;/p&gt;
10007
10008 &lt;p&gt;It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
10009 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
10010 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
10011 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
10012 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
10013 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
10014 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.&lt;/p&gt;
10015
10016 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
10017 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
10018 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
10019 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
10020 up. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10021
10022 &lt;p&gt;One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
10023 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
10024 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.&lt;/p&gt;
10025
10026 &lt;p&gt;We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
10027 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
10028 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
10029 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
10030 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
10031 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10032 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10033 release another day.&lt;/p&gt;
10034
10035 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10036 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10037 </description>
10038         </item>
10039
10040         <item>
10041                 <title>OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</title>
10042                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</link>
10043                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</guid>
10044                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
10045                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to
10046 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home&quot;&gt;todays
10047 opengeodata blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, I just discovered that the
10048 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10049 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT&quot;&gt;support
10050 for calculating routes&lt;/a&gt;.  The support is still experimental and
10051 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10052 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.&lt;/p&gt;
10053
10054 &lt;p&gt;Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10055 was provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.cloudmade.com/&quot;&gt;Cloudmade&lt;/a&gt;,
10056 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10057 the issue.  I&#39;ve had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10058 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10059 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10060 www.openstreetmap.org front page.&lt;/p&gt;
10061 </description>
10062         </item>
10063
10064         <item>
10065                 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
10066                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
10067                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
10068                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10069                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
10070 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
10071 on my
10072 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
10073 work&lt;/a&gt; on
10074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
10075 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
10076
10077 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10078 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10079 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
10080 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
10081
10082 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10083 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10084 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
10085
10086 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10087
10088 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
10089 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10090 the web.
10091
10092 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10093 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10094 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
10095 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10096 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10097 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
10098
10099 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10100 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10101 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
10102 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
10103 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
10104 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry.  For
10105 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10106 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10107 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10108 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10109 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10110 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
10111 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10112 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10113 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
10114 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10115
10116 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10117 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10118   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10119   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10120   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10121   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10122   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10123   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10124
10125 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10126   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10127   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
10128   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10129   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10130   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10131 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10132
10133 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10134 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10135 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
10136 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10137 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
10138
10139 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10140 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10141 objectclass: top
10142 objectclass: dnsdomain
10143 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10144 dc: tjener
10145 arecord: 10.0.2.2
10146 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10147
10148 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10149 objectclass: top
10150 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10151 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10152 dc: 2
10153 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10154 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10155 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10156
10157 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
10158 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
10159 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10160 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10161 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10162 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10163 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
10164 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
10165 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10166 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10167 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10168 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
10169
10170 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10171 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10172
10173 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10174 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10175   &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10176   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10177   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10178   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10179   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10180
10181 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10182   &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10183 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10184
10185 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10186 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10187 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
10188
10189 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10190 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10191 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
10192 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
10193
10194 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
10195 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
10196 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
10197
10198 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10199 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10200 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
10201 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10202 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
10203
10204 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10205 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10206 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10207 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10208 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
10209
10210 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10211 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10212 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10213 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10214 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10215 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
10216
10217 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10218 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
10219     SUP top
10220     AUXILIARY
10221     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10222           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10223           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10224           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10225           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10226     ))
10227 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10228
10229 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10230 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10231 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
10232 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10233 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10234 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
10235
10236 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10237
10238 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10239 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
10240 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10241 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10242 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
10243
10244 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10245 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10246 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
10247 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
10248
10249 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10250 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
10251 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
10252 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10253
10254 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10255 configuration it need.  The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
10256 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;.  The
10257 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
10258
10259 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10260 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10261 cn: dhcp
10262 objectClass: top
10263 objectClass: dhcpServer
10264 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10265 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10266
10267 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10268 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
10269 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
10270 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
10271 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
10272 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
10273
10274 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10275 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10276 cn: DHCP Config
10277 objectClass: top
10278 objectClass: dhcpService
10279 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10280 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10281 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10282 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10283 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
10284 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
10285 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
10286 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10287
10288 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
10289 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10290 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10291 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10292 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
10293 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
10294 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10295 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10296 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
10297
10298 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10299 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
10300 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
10301 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10302 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter.  This is what a host object look
10303 like:&lt;/p&gt;
10304
10305 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10306 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10307 cn: hostname
10308 objectClass: top
10309 objectClass: dhcpHost
10310 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10311 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10312 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10313
10314 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10315 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10316 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
10317 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10318 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
10319 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10320 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10321 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10322 structural object class.
10323
10324 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10325
10326 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10327 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
10328 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
10329 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10330 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
10331
10332 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10333 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10334 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10335 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10336 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10337 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
10338
10339 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10340 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
10341
10342 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10343 ou=services
10344   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10345     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10346     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10347       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10348         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10349     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10350       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10351         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10352     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10353       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10354 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10355
10356 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10357 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10358 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10359 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
10360
10361 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10362 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10363
10364 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10365 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10366 dc: hostname
10367 objectClass: top
10368 objectClass: dhcpHost
10369 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10370 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10371 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10372 arecord: 10.11.12.13
10373 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10374 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10375 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10376
10377 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10378 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10379 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
10380 </description>
10381         </item>
10382
10383         <item>
10384                 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
10385                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
10386                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
10387                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
10388                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10389 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10390 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10391 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10392 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
10393
10394 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10395 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
10396
10397 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10398 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
10399 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10400 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10401 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10402 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
10403
10404 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10405 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10406 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10407 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10408 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
10409 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
10410
10411 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10412 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10413 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
10414 this:&lt;/p&gt;
10415
10416 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10417   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10418   cn: hostname
10419   objectClass: dhcphost
10420   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10421   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10422   associateddomain: hostname.intern
10423   arecord: 10.11.12.13
10424   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10425   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10426   ldapconfigsound: Y
10427 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10428
10429 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10430 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10431 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
10432 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
10433
10434 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10435 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10436 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10437 that.  If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10438 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10439 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10440 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10441 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
10442
10443 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10444 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10445 </description>
10446         </item>
10447
10448         <item>
10449                 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
10450                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
10451                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
10452                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10453                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10454 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10455 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10456 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
10457
10458 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10459 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
10460 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10461 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10462 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
10463
10464 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10465 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10466 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
10467
10468 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10469 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10470 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
10471
10472 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10473 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10474 #
10475 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10476 #
10477 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10478 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10479 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10480 #
10481 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10482 # existence of attribute names.
10483 #
10484 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10485 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10486 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10487 #
10488 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10489 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
10490 #
10491 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
10492 #     SUP top
10493 #     AUXILIARY
10494 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10495
10496 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10497 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
10498     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10499     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
10500         filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
10501         ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
10502             grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
10503             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10504             attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
10505             # bass value on to clients
10506             eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
10507         done
10508     done
10509 fi
10510 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10511
10512 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10513 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10514 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10515 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10516 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10517
10518 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10519 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10520
10521 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10522 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
10523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
10524 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  I found its
10525 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
10526 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
10527 </description>
10528         </item>
10529
10530         <item>
10531                 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
10532                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
10533                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
10534                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10535                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
10536 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
10537 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10538 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
10539 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
10540 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10541 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
10542 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10543 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
10544 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
10545 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
10546 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
10547 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10548 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
10549 </description>
10550         </item>
10551
10552         <item>
10553                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
10554                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
10555                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
10556                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10557                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
10558 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
10559 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of the
10560 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I&#39;m
10561 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10562 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10563 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
10564 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
10565
10566 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10567 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
10568 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
10569 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10570 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
10571
10572 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10573
10574 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10575   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10576   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10577   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10578   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10579   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10580   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10581   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10582   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10583 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10584
10585 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10586
10587 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10588   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10589   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10590   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10591   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10592   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10593   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10594   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10595   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10596   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10597   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10598   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10599   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10600   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10601   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10602   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10603   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10604   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10605   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10606   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10607   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10608 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10609
10610 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10611
10612 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10613   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10614   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10615   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10616   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10617   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10618   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10619   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10620   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10621   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10622   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10623   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10624   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10625   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10626   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10627   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10628   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10629   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10630   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10631   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10632   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10633   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10634 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10635
10636 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10637
10638 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10639   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10640   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10641   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10642 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10643
10644 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10645 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
10646 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10647 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10648 the difference somewhat.
10649 </description>
10650         </item>
10651
10652         <item>
10653                 <title>Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</title>
10654                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</link>
10655                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</guid>
10656                 <pubDate>Thu, 1 Jul 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
10657                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10658 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10659 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10660 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10661 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10662 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10663 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10664 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10665 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.&lt;/p&gt;
10666
10667 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
10668
10669 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
10670 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
10671 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
10672 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
10673 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10674 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
10675 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10676 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10677 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10678 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10679 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/568577&quot;&gt;bug #568577&lt;/a&gt; is in the
10680 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10681 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10682 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
10683 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.&lt;/p&gt;
10684
10685 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured&lt;/p&gt;
10686
10687 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10688 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10689 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10690
10691 &lt;p&gt;The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10692 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
10693 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10694 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I&#39;ve been unable to get TLS
10695 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10696 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10697 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10698 on how to get this working.&lt;/p&gt;
10699
10700 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10701 caching until &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;bug #485282&lt;/a&gt;
10702 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10703 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
10704 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10705 instructions I found in the
10706 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/&quot;&gt;LDAP for Mobile Laptops&lt;/a&gt;
10707 instructions by Flyn Computing.&lt;/p&gt;
10708
10709 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10710         debug-level             0
10711         reload-count            unlimited
10712         paranoia                no
10713
10714         enable-cache            passwd          yes
10715         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
10716         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
10717         suggested-size          passwd          211
10718         check-files             passwd          yes
10719         persistent              passwd          yes
10720         shared                  passwd          yes
10721         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
10722         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
10723
10724         enable-cache            group           yes
10725         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
10726         negative-time-to-live   group           20
10727         suggested-size          group           211
10728         check-files             group           yes
10729         persistent              group           yes
10730         shared                  group           yes
10731         max-db-size             group           33554432
10732         auto-propagate          group           yes
10733
10734         enable-cache            hosts           no
10735         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
10736         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
10737         suggested-size          hosts           211
10738         check-files             hosts           yes
10739         persistent              hosts           yes
10740         shared                  hosts           yes
10741         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
10742
10743         enable-cache            services        yes
10744         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
10745         negative-time-to-live   services        20
10746         suggested-size          services        211
10747         check-files             services        yes
10748         persistent              services        yes
10749         shared                  services        yes
10750         max-db-size             services        33554432
10751 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10752
10753 &lt;p&gt;While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
10754 automatically like the one provided in
10755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/496915&quot;&gt;bug #496915&lt;/a&gt;, the file
10756 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
10757 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
10758 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
10759
10760 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10761 passwd:         files ldap
10762 group:          files ldap
10763 shadow:         files ldap
10764 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
10765 networks:       files
10766 protocols:      files
10767 services:       files
10768 ethers:         files
10769 rpc:            files
10770 netgroup:       files ldap
10771 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10772
10773 &lt;p&gt;The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
10774 shadow and netgroup.&lt;/p&gt;
10775
10776 &lt;p&gt;With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
10777 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
10778 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
10779 attributes cached.
10780
10781 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
10782   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
10783
10784 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
10785 problems doing proper caching, I&#39;ve seen suggestions and recipes to
10786 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
10787 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
10788 discovered sssd.&lt;/p&gt;
10789
10790 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/h2&gt;
10791
10792 &lt;p&gt;A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
10793 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
10794 &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package from Redhat.
10795 It is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeipa.org/&quot;&gt;FreeIPA&lt;/A&gt; project
10796 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
10797 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
10798 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
10799 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
10800 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
10801 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
10802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd package&lt;/a&gt;
10803 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
10804 version 1.2 is now in testing.
10805
10806 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
10807 roaming setup I want&lt;/p&gt;
10808
10809 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10810 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
10811 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10812
10813 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
10814 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/sssd/sssd.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.
10815
10816 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10817 [sssd]
10818 config_file_version = 2
10819 reconnection_retries = 3
10820 sbus_timeout = 30
10821 services = nss, pam
10822 domains = INTERN
10823
10824 [nss]
10825 filter_groups = root
10826 filter_users = root
10827 reconnection_retries = 3
10828
10829 [pam]
10830 reconnection_retries = 3
10831
10832 [domain/INTERN]
10833 enumerate = false
10834 cache_credentials = true
10835
10836 id_provider = ldap
10837 auth_provider = ldap
10838 chpass_provider = ldap
10839
10840 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
10841 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10842 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
10843 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
10844 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10845
10846 &lt;p&gt;I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
10847 &quot;ldap_tls_reqcert = never&quot; to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;
10848
10849 &lt;p&gt;With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
10850 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
10851 modify it manually.&lt;/p&gt;
10852
10853 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10854 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10855 </description>
10856         </item>
10857
10858         <item>
10859                 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
10860                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
10861                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
10862                 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
10863                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10864 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10865 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
10866 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
10868 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10869 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
10870 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10871 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
10872 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
10873
10874 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10875 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10876 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10877 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10878 released.&lt;/p&gt;
10879
10880 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
10881 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10882 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
10883 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
10884
10885 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10886 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10887
10888 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10889 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
10890 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10891 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
10892 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
10893 </description>
10894         </item>
10895
10896         <item>
10897                 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
10898                 <link>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</link>
10899                 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
10900                 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
10901                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
10902 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
10903 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10904 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10905 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
10906
10907 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10908 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10909 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10910 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
10911
10912 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10913 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10914 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10915 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
10916
10917 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10918 the
10919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
10920 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10921 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
10922
10923 &lt;pre&gt;
10924 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
10925 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
10926 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
10927  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10928         NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
10929         DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
10930 -       SUP top
10931 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
10932         MUST cn
10933         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10934         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
10935 &lt;/pre&gt;
10936
10937 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10938 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10939 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
10940
10941 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10942 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10943 </description>
10944         </item>
10945
10946         <item>
10947                 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
10948                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
10949                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
10950                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10951                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10952 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
10953 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10954 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10955 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10956 this:
10957
10958 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10959 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10960 tasksel --new-install
10961 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10962
10963 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10964 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10965 any output what so ever.
10966
10967 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10968 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10969 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10970 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10971 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10972 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
10973 code like this:
10974
10975 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
10976 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10977 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
10978 $cmd
10979 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10980
10981 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
10982 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10983 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10984 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10985 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10986 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10987 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
10988
10989 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10990 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10991 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
10992 </description>
10993         </item>
10994
10995         <item>
10996                 <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
10997                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
10998                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
10999                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11000                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
11001 interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
11002 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
11003 &lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
11004 pages.&lt;/p&gt;
11005
11006 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
11007 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
11008 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
11009 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
11010 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
11011 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
11012 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
11013 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
11014 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
11015 see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;
11016
11017 &lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
11018 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
11019 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
11020 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
11021 Windows.  This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
11022 </description>
11023         </item>
11024
11025         <item>
11026                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
11027                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
11028                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
11029                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
11030                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
11031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
11032 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
11033 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11034 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
11035 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11036 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
11037 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
11038
11039 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11040 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
11041 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11042 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11043 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11044 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11045 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11046 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
11047
11048 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11049 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11050 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11051 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
11052
11053 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11054 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
11055 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
11056 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11057 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11058 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
11059 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
11060 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
11061
11062 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
11063 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11064   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11065   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11066   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11067   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11068   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11069   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11070   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11071   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11072   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11073   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11074   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11075   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11076   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11077   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11078   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11079   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11080   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11081   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11082   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11083   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11084   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11085   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11086   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11087   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11088   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11089   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11090   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11091   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
11092
11093 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
11094
11095 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11096   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11097   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11098   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11099   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11100   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11101   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11102   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11103   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11104   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11105   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11106   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11107   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11108   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11109   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11110   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11111   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11112   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11113   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11114   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11115   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11116   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11117   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11118   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11119   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11120   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11121   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11122   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11123   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11124   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11125   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11126   zip&lt;/p&gt;
11127
11128 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
11129
11130 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11131   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11132   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11133   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11134   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11135   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11136   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11137   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11138   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11139   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11140   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11141   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11142   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11143   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11144   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11145   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11146   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11147   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11148   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11149   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11150   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11151   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11152   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11153   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11154   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11155   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11156   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11157   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
11158
11159 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
11160 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11161   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11162   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11163   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11164   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11165   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11166   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11167   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11168   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11169   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11170   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11171   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11172   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11173   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11174   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11175   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11176   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11177   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11178   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11179   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11180   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11181   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11182   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11183   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11184   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11185   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11186   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11187   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11188   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11189   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11190   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11191   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11192   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11193   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11194   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11195   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11196   xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
11197
11198 </description>
11199         </item>
11200
11201         <item>
11202                 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
11203                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
11204                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
11205                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11206                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11207 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
11208 have been discovered and reported in the process
11209 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
11210 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
11211 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
11212 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11213 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
11214
11215 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11216 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11217 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11218 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11219 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11220 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
11221
11222 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11223 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11224 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11225 is created.  The bug report
11226 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
11227 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11228 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
11229 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11230 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
11231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
11232 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11233 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11234 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
11235 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11236 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11237 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11238 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
11239
11240 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
11241 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
11242 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
11243
11244 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11245 #!/bin/sh
11246 set -ex
11247
11248 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
11249     desktop=$1
11250 else
11251     desktop=gnome
11252 fi
11253
11254 from=lenny
11255 to=squeeze
11256
11257 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
11258 unset LANG
11259 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11260 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11261 fuser -mv .
11262 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11263 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11264 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
11265 #!/bin/sh
11266 exit 101
11267 EOF
11268 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11269 exit_cleanup() {
11270     umount $tmpdir/proc
11271 }
11272 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11273 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11274 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11275
11276 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11277
11278 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
11279 # to return the correct answers.
11280 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11281     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11282
11283 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11284 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11285     echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
11286 #!/bin/sh
11287 exit 2
11288 EOF
11289     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11290 done
11291
11292 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11293 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11294 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11295 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11296
11297 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11298 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11299 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11300 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11301 fuser -mv
11302 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11303
11304 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11305 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11306 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11307 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
11308 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11309 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
11310
11311 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11312 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11313 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
11314 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
11315 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11316 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
11317 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
11318
11319 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11320 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11321 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11322 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11323 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11324 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
11325 </description>
11326         </item>
11327
11328         <item>
11329                 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
11330                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
11331                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
11332                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
11333                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11334 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11335 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
11336 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11337 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
11338 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11339 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
11340
11341 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11342 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11343 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
11344
11345 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11346 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
11347 previous=N
11348 PREVLEVEL=
11349 RUNLEVEL=
11350 runlevel=S
11351 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11352 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
11353 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11354 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11355
11356 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11357 script.&lt;/p&gt;
11358
11359 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11360 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
11361 previous=N
11362 PREVLEVEL=N
11363 RUNLEVEL=S
11364 runlevel=S
11365 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11366
11367 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11368 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
11369 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
11370
11371 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11372 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11373 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
11374 </description>
11375         </item>
11376
11377         <item>
11378                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
11379                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
11380                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
11381                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
11382                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
11383 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
11384 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
11385 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
11386 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
11387 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
11388 </description>
11389         </item>
11390
11391         <item>
11392                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
11393                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
11394                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
11395                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
11396                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11397 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11398 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
11399 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11400 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
11401
11402 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11403 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11404   vendor                    count
11405   Dell Computer Corporation     1
11406     PowerEdge 1750              1
11407   IBM                           1
11408     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
11409   Intel                         2
11410   [no-dmi-info]                 3
11411 maintainer:~#
11412 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11413
11414 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11415 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
11416 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11417 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
11418 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
11419
11420 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
11421 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
11422 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11423 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
11424 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11425 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11426 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11427 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
11428 </description>
11429         </item>
11430
11431         <item>
11432                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
11433                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
11434                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
11435                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
11436                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11437 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
11438 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11439 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11440 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
11441
11442 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11443 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
11444 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11445 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11446 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
11447 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
11448
11449 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11450 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11451 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
11452 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11453 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11454 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11455 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
11456 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
11457
11458 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
11459 </description>
11460         </item>
11461
11462         <item>
11463                 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
11464                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
11465                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
11466                 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
11467                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11468 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11469 issues are known and should be solved:
11470
11471 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
11472
11473 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
11474 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
11475 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
11476 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11477 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
11478
11479 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
11480 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
11481 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
11482 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
11483
11484 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11485 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11486 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
11487 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11488 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11489 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11490 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11491 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
11492
11493 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11494
11495 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11496 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
11497 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11498 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
11499
11500 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11501 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11502 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11503 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11504
11505 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
11506 </description>
11507         </item>
11508
11509         <item>
11510                 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
11511                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
11512                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
11513                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11514                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11515 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
11516 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11517 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
11518
11519 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
11520 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11521 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
11522 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11523 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11524 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11525 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
11526 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11527 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
11528 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11529 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11530 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11531 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11532 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
11533
11534 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11535 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11536 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11537 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11538 &quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
11539 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11540 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
11541 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11542 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11543 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11544 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
11545
11546 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11547 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11548 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11549 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
11550 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11551 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
11552
11553 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11554 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11555 </description>
11556         </item>
11557
11558         <item>
11559                 <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
11560                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
11561                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
11562                 <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11563                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11564 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
11565 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html&quot;&gt;libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/a&gt;
11566 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11567 into unstable.  The
11568 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html&quot;&gt;pam-python&lt;/a&gt;
11569 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11570 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package
11571 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
11572 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
11573 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
11574 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.&lt;/p&gt;
11575
11576 &lt;p&gt;This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11577 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11578 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11579 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11580 for nscd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;BTS report
11581 #485282&lt;/a&gt; is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11582 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11583 care of the caching of passwords and group information.&lt;/p&gt;
11584
11585 &lt;p&gt;I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11586 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11587 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
11588 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11589 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11590 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11591 and I am sure we will find a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;
11592
11593 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11594 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11595 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11596 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
11597 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
11598 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
11599 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
11600 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
11601 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
11602 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
11603 on the home directory servers.&lt;/p&gt;
11604
11605 &lt;p&gt;One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
11606 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
11607 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
11608 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
11609 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
11610 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.&lt;/p&gt;
11611
11612 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11613 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11614 </description>
11615         </item>
11616
11617         <item>
11618                 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
11619                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
11620                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
11621                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11622                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11623 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11624 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11625 expected, if I am to believe the
11626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
11627 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11628 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11629 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
11630 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11631 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11632 version.&lt;/p&gt;
11633
11634 More information about
11635 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
11636 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
11637 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11638 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
11639
11640 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11641 CONCURRENCY=none
11642 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11643
11644 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11645 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11646 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11647 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11648 </description>
11649         </item>
11650
11651         <item>
11652                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
11653                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
11654                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
11655                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
11656                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11657 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
11658 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11659 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11660 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
11661 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11662 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
11663 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11664
11665 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11666 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
11667 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
11668
11669 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11670 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
11671 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11672
11673 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11674 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
11675
11676 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11677 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11678 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11679 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
11680 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11681 </description>
11682         </item>
11683
11684         <item>
11685                 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
11686                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
11687                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
11688                 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11689                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
11690 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
11691 has been
11692 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
11693
11694 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
11695 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11696 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
11697 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11698 based boot system.  Tollef is
11699 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
11700 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
11701 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11702 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11703 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
11704
11705 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11706 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11707 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
11708 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11709 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11710 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
11711
11712 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
11713 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
11714 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11715 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11716 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11717 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
11718 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11719 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11720 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
11721 </description>
11722         </item>
11723
11724         <item>
11725                 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
11726                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
11727                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
11728                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
11729                 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11730 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11731 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
11732 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11733 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
11734 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
11735 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
11736
11737 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11738 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11739 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11740
11741 &lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11742 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11743 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11744 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
11745 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11746 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11747 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
11748
11749 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
11750 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11751 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11752 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
11753 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11754
11755 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11756 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
11757 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
11758 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
11759
11760 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11761 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11762 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
11763 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11764 </description>
11765         </item>
11766
11767         <item>
11768                 <title>Forcing new users to change their password on first login</title>
11769                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</link>
11770                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</guid>
11771                 <pubDate>Sun, 2 May 2010 13:47:00 +0200</pubDate>
11772                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
11773 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
11774 change the password on the first login attempt.&lt;/p&gt;
11775
11776 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
11777 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
11778 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
11779 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
11780 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.&lt;/p&gt;
11781
11782 &lt;p&gt;A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
11783 settings in /etc/shadow:&lt;/p&gt;
11784
11785 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11786 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11787 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
11788 Password expires                                        : never
11789 Password inactive                                       : never
11790 Account expires                                         : never
11791 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
11792 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
11793 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
11794 root@tjener:~#
11795 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11796
11797 &lt;p&gt;The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
11798 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
11799 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
11800 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
11801 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
11802 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).&lt;/p&gt;
11803
11804 &lt;p&gt;After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
11805 intended:&lt;/p&gt;
11806
11807 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11808 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
11809 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11810 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
11811 Password expires                                        : never
11812 Password inactive                                       : never
11813 Account expires                                         : never
11814 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
11815 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
11816 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
11817 root@tjener:~#
11818 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11819
11820 &lt;p&gt;So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
11821 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
11822 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).&lt;/p&gt;
11823
11824 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
11825 sure only the user itself have the account password?&lt;/p&gt;
11826
11827 &lt;p&gt;If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
11828 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11829
11830 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
11831 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
11832 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
11833 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
11834 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
11835 Squeeze, and &#39;&lt;tt&gt;chage -d 0 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; do work there.  I have not
11836 tested it on Lenny yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11837
11838 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
11839 equivalent command to expire a password is &#39;&lt;tt&gt;passwd -e
11840 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;, which insert zero into the date of the last password
11841 change.&lt;/p&gt;
11842 </description>
11843         </item>
11844
11845         <item>
11846                 <title>Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</title>
11847                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11848                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11849                 <pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
11850                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
11851 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
11852 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
11853 and go.&lt;/p&gt;
11854
11855 &lt;p&gt;Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
11856 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
11857 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
11858 The setup would consist of the following:&lt;/p&gt;
11859
11860 &lt;ul&gt;
11861
11862  &lt;li&gt;During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
11863    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
11864    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
11865    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
11866    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
11867    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
11868    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
11869    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
11870    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
11871    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
11872    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
11873    the fish protocol in KDE?&lt;/li&gt;
11874
11875  &lt;li&gt;Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
11876    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
11877    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
11878    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
11879    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
11880    or the Fedora developed
11881    &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD&quot;&gt;System
11882    Security Services Daemon&lt;/a&gt; packages.&lt;/li&gt;
11883
11884  &lt;li&gt;File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
11885    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
11886    directory, using unison.&lt;/li&gt;
11887
11888  &lt;li&gt;Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
11889    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
11890    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
11891    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
11892    implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
11893
11894  &lt;li&gt;For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
11895    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.&lt;/li&gt;
11896
11897  &lt;li&gt;It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
11898    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
11899    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.&lt;/li&gt;
11900
11901 &lt;/ul&gt;
11902
11903 &lt;p&gt;I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
11904 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
11905 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
11906 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
11907 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566718&quot;&gt;#566718&lt;/a&gt;) and nslcd (or
11908 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
11909 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
11910 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
11911 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.&lt;/p&gt;
11912
11913 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11914 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11915 </description>
11916         </item>
11917
11918         <item>
11919                 <title>Great book: &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot;</title>
11920                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</link>
11921                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</guid>
11922                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
11923                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
11924 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
11925 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
11926 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
11927 book titled &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
11928 Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot; is available with few
11929 restrictions on the web, for example from
11930 &lt;a href=&quot;http://craphound.com/content/&quot;&gt;his own site&lt;/a&gt;. I read the
11931 epub-version from
11932 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883&quot;&gt;feedbooks&lt;/a&gt; using
11933 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbreader.org/&quot;&gt;fbreader&lt;/a&gt; and my N810. I
11934 strongly recommend this book.&lt;/p&gt;
11935 </description>
11936         </item>
11937
11938         <item>
11939                 <title>Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</title>
11940                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</link>
11941                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</guid>
11942                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11943                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/&quot;&gt;Yesterdays
11944 NUUG presentation&lt;/a&gt; about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
11945 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
11946 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
11947 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
11948 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
11949 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
11950 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
11951 users and cryptographic keys instead.&lt;/p&gt;
11952
11953 &lt;p&gt;A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
11954 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
11955 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
11956 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
11957 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.&lt;/p&gt;
11958
11959 &lt;p&gt;A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
11960 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;
11961
11962 &lt;p&gt;Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
11963 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
11964 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
11965 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
11966 to work properly.&lt;/p&gt;
11967
11968 &lt;p&gt;I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
11969 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
11970 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
11971 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
11972 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
11973 time.&lt;/p&gt;
11974
11975 &lt;p&gt;If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
11976 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
11977 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
11978 up in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
11979 </description>
11980         </item>
11981
11982         <item>
11983                 <title>After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</title>
11984                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</link>
11985                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</guid>
11986                 <pubDate>Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
11987                 <description>&lt;p&gt;6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
11988 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
11989 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
11990 package in 2004 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/230422&quot;&gt;#230422&lt;/a&gt;),
11991 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
11992 Today, this finally paid off.&lt;/p&gt;
11993
11994 &lt;p&gt;The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
11995 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
11996 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
11997 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.&lt;/p&gt;
11998
11999 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
12000 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
12001 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
12002 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
12003 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
12004 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.&lt;p&gt;
12005 </description>
12006         </item>
12007
12008         <item>
12009                 <title>Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</title>
12010                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</link>
12011                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</guid>
12012                 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
12013                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
12014 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was finally
12015 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
12016 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
12017 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
12018 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
12019 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;
12020
12021 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps it even is time for some partying?&lt;/p&gt;
12022
12023 &lt;p&gt;After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
12024 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
12025 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
12026 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;
12027 </description>
12028         </item>
12029
12030         <item>
12031                 <title>Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</title>
12032                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</link>
12033                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</guid>
12034                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
12035                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
12036 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
12037 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
12038 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
12039 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
12040 further.&lt;/p&gt;
12041
12042 &lt;p&gt;When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
12043 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
12044 configured to be a server for the
12045 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;SiteSummary
12046 system&lt;/a&gt; I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
12047 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
12048 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
12049 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
12050 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
12051 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
12052 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
12053 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
12054 and Nagios configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
12055
12056 &lt;p&gt;All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
12057 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
12058 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
12059 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.&lt;/p&gt;
12060
12061 &lt;p&gt;All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
12062 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
12063 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
12064 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
12065 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
12066 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
12067 the machine.&lt;/p&gt;
12068
12069 &lt;p&gt;The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
12070 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
12071 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
12072 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;
12073
12074 &lt;p&gt;The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
12075 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
12076 administrator need to run &quot;&lt;tt&gt;htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
12077 nagiosadmin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
12078 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
12079 everything is taken care of.&lt;/p&gt;
12080 </description>
12081         </item>
12082
12083         <item>
12084                 <title>Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</title>
12085                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</link>
12086                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</guid>
12087                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12088                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
12089 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
12090 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
12091 &#39;filetype:odt&#39; and equvalent terms, and got these results:&lt;/P&gt;
12092
12093 &lt;table&gt;
12094 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12095 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:282000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12096 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:75600&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:183000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12097 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:145000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12098 &lt;/table&gt;
12099
12100 &lt;p&gt;Next, I added a &#39;site:no&#39; limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
12101 got these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;
12102
12103 &lt;table&gt;
12104 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12105 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:4460&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12106 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:299   &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:741&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12107 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:187       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:372&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12108 &lt;/table&gt;
12109
12110 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how these numbers change over time.&lt;/p&gt;
12111
12112 &lt;p&gt;I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
12113 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
12114 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
12115 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
12116 search done from a machine here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
12117
12118
12119 &lt;table&gt;
12120 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12121 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:129000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12122 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:44200&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:93900&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12123 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:82400&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12124 &lt;/table&gt;
12125
12126 &lt;p&gt;And with &#39;site:no&#39;:
12127
12128 &lt;table&gt;
12129 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12130 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:3410&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12131 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:175&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:604&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12132 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:186       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:296&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
12133 &lt;/table&gt;
12134
12135 &lt;p&gt;Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
12136 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;
12137 </description>
12138         </item>
12139
12140         <item>
12141                 <title>ISO still hope to fix OOXML</title>
12142                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</link>
12143                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</guid>
12144                 <pubDate>Sat, 8 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12145                 <description>&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a
12146 href=&quot;http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html&quot;&gt;a
12147 blog post from Torsten Werner&lt;/a&gt;, the current defect report for ISO
12148 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
12149 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
12150 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
12151 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
12152 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
12153 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
12154 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
12155 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.&lt;/p&gt;
12156
12157 &lt;p&gt;These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
12158 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
12159 seminar this autumn.&lt;/p&gt;
12160 </description>
12161         </item>
12162
12163         <item>
12164                 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
12165                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
12166                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
12167                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12168                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12169 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12170 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12171 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12172 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12173 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12174 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
12175
12176 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12177 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12178 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
12179 </description>
12180         </item>
12181
12182         <item>
12183                 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
12184                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
12185                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
12186                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12187                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12188 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12189 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12190 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12191 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12192 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
12193
12194 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12195 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12196 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12197 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12198 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12199 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12200 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12201 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
12202 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12203 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12204 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12205 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
12206
12207 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12208 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
12209 </description>
12210         </item>
12211
12212         <item>
12213                 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
12214                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
12215                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
12216                 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
12217                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12218 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12219 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
12220 funded
12221 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
12222 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
12223 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12224 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12225 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12226 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
12227
12228 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12229 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
12230 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
12231
12232 &lt;ul&gt;
12233
12234 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
12235
12236 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12237    clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
12238
12239 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12240    &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
12241    based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
12242
12243 &lt;/ul&gt;
12244
12245 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12246 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
12247 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
12248
12249 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12250 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12251 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
12252 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12253 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12254 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
12255
12256 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12257 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12258 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12259 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12260 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
12261 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12262 insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12263 </description>
12264         </item>
12265
12266         <item>
12267                 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
12268                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
12269                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
12270                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12271                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12272 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12273 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
12274
12275 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
12276 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12277 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
12278 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
12279 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
12280 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12281 occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
12282 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
12283 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
12284 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12285 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12286
12287 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
12288 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
12289 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
12290 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
12291 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12292 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
12293 and the company behind it is running
12294 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
12295 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12296 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
12297 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
12298 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
12299 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
12300 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12301 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
12302
12303 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12304 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12305 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12306 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
12307 </description>
12308         </item>
12309
12310         <item>
12311                 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
12312                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
12313                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
12314                 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
12315                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
12316 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
12317 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
12318 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12319 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12320 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
12321 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
12322 </description>
12323         </item>
12324
12325         <item>
12326                 <title>Recording video from cron using VLC</title>
12327                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</link>
12328                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</guid>
12329                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12330                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
12331 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
12332 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
12333 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
12334 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
12335 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
12336 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
12337 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:&lt;/p&gt;
12338
12339 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
12340 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
12341 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
12342   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
12343   --intf=dummy&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12344
12345 &lt;p&gt;The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
12346 duplicating the output stream to &quot;nodisplay&quot; and the file, using the
12347 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
12348 sure no X interface is needed.&lt;/p&gt;
12349
12350 &lt;p&gt;The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
12351 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
12352 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
12353 &lt;tt&gt;vlc-record&lt;/tt&gt; to use from &lt;tt&gt;at&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;cron&lt;/tt&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
12354
12355 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;#!/bin/sh
12356 set -e
12357 URL=&quot;$1&quot;
12358 SAVEFILE=&quot;$2&quot;
12359 DURATION=&quot;$3&quot;
12360 DISPLAY= vlc -q &quot;$URL&quot; \
12361   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
12362   --intf=dummy &lt; /dev/null &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
12363 pid=$!
12364 sleep $DURATION
12365 kill $pid
12366 wait $pid&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12367 </description>
12368         </item>
12369
12370         <item>
12371                 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
12372                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
12373                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
12374                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
12375                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12376 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
12377 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12378 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12379 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12380 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12381 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12382 application.&lt;/p&gt;
12383
12384 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12385 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
12386 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12387 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
12388 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12389 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12390 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
12391
12392 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12393 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12394 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12395 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
12396
12397 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12398 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12399 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
12400 </description>
12401         </item>
12402
12403         <item>
12404                 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
12405                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
12406                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
12407                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12408                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
12409 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
12410 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
12411 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
12412 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
12413 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
12414 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
12415 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
12416 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
12417 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
12418 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
12419 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
12420 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
12421 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
12422 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12423 </description>
12424         </item>
12425
12426         <item>
12427                 <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
12428                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
12429                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
12430                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
12431                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
12432 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
12433 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
12434 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
12435 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
12436 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
12437
12438 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
12439 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
12440 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
12441 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
12442 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
12443 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
12444 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
12445 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
12446 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
12447 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
12448 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
12449 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
12450 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
12451
12452 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
12453 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
12454 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
12455 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
12456
12457 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
12458 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
12459
12460 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
12461 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
12462 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
12463 </description>
12464         </item>
12465
12466         <item>
12467                 <title>Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</title>
12468                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</link>
12469                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</guid>
12470                 <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12471                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
12472 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
12473 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
12474 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
12475 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
12476 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
12477 status, I&#39;ve recently spent time on extending the machine register to
12478 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
12479 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
12480 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
12481 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
12482 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
12483 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
12484 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
12485 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
12486 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
12487 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
12488 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
12489 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
12490 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
12491 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
12492 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
12493 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
12494 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
12495 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
12496 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
12497
12498 &lt;p&gt;I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
12499 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
12500 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
12501 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
12502 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
12503 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
12504 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:&lt;/p&gt;
12505
12506 &lt;pre&gt;
12507 use LWP::Simple;
12508 use POSIX;
12509 use WWW::Mechanize;
12510 use Date::Parse;
12511 [...]
12512 sub get_support_info {
12513     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
12514     my $str;
12515
12516     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
12517         # fetch website from Dell support
12518         my $url = &quot;http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;amp;l=no&amp;amp;s=dhs&amp;amp;ServiceTag=$serial&quot;;
12519         my $webpage = get($url);
12520         return undef unless ($webpage);
12521
12522         my $daysleft = -1;
12523         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
12524         foreach my $line (@lines) {
12525             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
12526             $line =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12527             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
12528
12529             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
12530             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
12531             my $lastend = &quot;&quot;;
12532             while ($f[3] eq &quot;DELL&quot;) {
12533                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
12534
12535                 my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12536                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12537                 my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12538                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
12539                 $str .= &quot;$type $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
12540                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
12541                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
12542             }
12543             my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12544             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12545                 if ($lastend lt $today);
12546         }
12547     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
12548         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-&gt;new();
12549         my $url =
12550             &#39;http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do&#39;;
12551         $mech-&gt;get($url);
12552         my $fields = {
12553             &#39;BODServiceID&#39; =&gt; &#39;NA&#39;,
12554             &#39;RegisteredPurchaseDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
12555             &#39;country&#39; =&gt; &#39;NO&#39;,
12556             &#39;productNumber&#39; =&gt; $productnumber,
12557             &#39;serialNumber1&#39; =&gt; $serial,
12558         };
12559         $mech-&gt;submit_form( form_number =&gt; 2,
12560                             fields      =&gt; $fields );
12561         # Next step is screen scraping
12562         my $content = $mech-&gt;content();
12563
12564         $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12565         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12566         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12567         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12568
12569         my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12570
12571         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
12572             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
12573                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
12574             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
12575             my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12576                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12577             my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
12578                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
12579
12580             $str .= &quot;$type ($status) $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
12581
12582             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12583                 if ($end lt $today);
12584         }
12585     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
12586         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
12587         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
12588         if ($producttype &amp;amp;&amp;amp; $serial) {
12589             my $content =
12590                 get(&quot;http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;amp;brandind=5000008&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&amp;amp;type=$producttype&amp;amp;serial=$serial&quot;);
12591             if ($content) {
12592                 $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
12593                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12594                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12595                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12596
12597                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
12598                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
12599
12600                 $str .= &quot;($status) -&gt; $end &quot;;
12601
12602                 my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
12603                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12604                     if ($end lt $today);
12605             }
12606         }
12607     }
12608     return $str;
12609 }
12610 &lt;/pre&gt;
12611
12612 &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
12613 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
12614 from dmidecode.&lt;/p&gt;
12615
12616 &lt;pre&gt;
12617 print get_support_info(&quot;hp.host&quot;, &quot;HP ProLiant BL460c G1&quot;, &quot;1234567890&quot;
12618                        &quot;447707-B21&quot;);
12619 print get_support_info(&quot;dell.host&quot;, &quot;Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950&quot;, &quot;1234567&quot;);
12620 print get_support_info(&quot;ibm.host&quot;, &quot;IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-&quot;,
12621                        &quot;1234567&quot;);
12622 &lt;/pre&gt;
12623
12624 &lt;p&gt;I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
12625 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12626
12627 &lt;p&gt;Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
12628 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
12629 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
12630 do so.&lt;/p&gt;
12631 </description>
12632         </item>
12633
12634         <item>
12635                 <title>Using bar codes at a computing center</title>
12636                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</link>
12637                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</guid>
12638                 <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12639                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
12640 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
12641 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
12642 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
12643 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
12644 the &quot;missing&quot; computer.&lt;/p&gt;
12645
12646 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
12647 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libdmtx.org/&quot;&gt;libdmtx&lt;/a&gt; to write and read bar
12648 code blocks as defined in the
12649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix&quot;&gt;The Data Matrix
12650 Standard&lt;/a&gt;.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
12651 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
12652 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
12653 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
12654 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/&quot;&gt;a bar code
12655 writer written in postscript&lt;/a&gt; capable of creating such bar codes,
12656 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
12657 codes.&lt;/p&gt;
12658
12659 &lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
12660 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
12661 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
12662 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
12663 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
12664 locations, and can detect movements and removals.&lt;/p&gt;
12665
12666 &lt;p&gt;I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
12667 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
12668 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
12669 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
12670 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
12671 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
12672 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
12673 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
12674 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
12675 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.&lt;/p&gt;
12676
12677 &lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
12678 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
12679 easier automatic tracking of computers.&lt;/p&gt;
12680 </description>
12681         </item>
12682
12683         <item>
12684                 <title>When web browser developers make a video player...</title>
12685                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</link>
12686                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</guid>
12687                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
12688                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of the work we do in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;
12689 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
12690 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
12691 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
12692 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
12693 will become easier when the &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag is implemented in all
12694 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
12695 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
12696 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
12697 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
12698 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
12699 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;object&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;embed&amp;gt; tag and
12700 the &amp;lt;applet&amp;gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
12701 finding the best options is a major challenge.&lt;/p&gt;
12702
12703 &lt;p&gt;I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from &lt;a
12704 href=&quot;http://labs.opera.com&quot;&gt;labs.opera.com&lt;/a&gt;, to see how it handled
12705 a &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
12706 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
12707 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
12708 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
12709 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
12710 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
12711 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
12712 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
12713 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
12714 discover that I have to add the controls=&quot;true&quot; attribute to be able
12715 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
12716 autoplay=&quot;true&quot; did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
12717 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
12718 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
12719 playing when the download is done.&lt;/p&gt;
12720
12721 &lt;p&gt;The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
12722 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/&quot;&gt;available
12723 from the nuug site&lt;/a&gt;.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
12724 too.&lt;/p&gt;
12725
12726 &lt;p&gt;In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
12727 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
12728 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
12729 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12730 </description>
12731         </item>
12732
12733         <item>
12734                 <title>Software video mixer on a USB stick</title>
12735                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</link>
12736                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</guid>
12737                 <pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
12738                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; is
12739 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
12740 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
12741 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
12742 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt; package from
12743 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
12744 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
12745 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
12746 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
12747 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
12748 source, sink and mixer applications and
12749 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinodv.org/&quot;&gt;dvgrab&lt;/a&gt;.  To allow this setup to
12750 work without any configuration, I&#39;ve patched dvswitch to use
12751 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avahi.org/&quot;&gt;avahi&lt;/a&gt; to connect the various parts
12752 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
12753 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
12754 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
12755 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
12756 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
12757 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/&quot;&gt;Go Open 2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
12758
12759 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz&quot;&gt;The
12760 USB image&lt;/a&gt; is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
12761 larger stick as well.&lt;/p&gt;
12762 </description>
12763         </item>
12764
12765         <item>
12766                 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
12767                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
12768                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
12769                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
12770                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
12771 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
12772 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
12773 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
12774 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
12775 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
12776 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
12777 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
12778
12779 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
12780 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
12781 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
12782 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
12783 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
12784 </description>
12785         </item>
12786
12787         <item>
12788                 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
12789                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
12790                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
12791                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
12792                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
12793 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
12794 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
12795 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
12796 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
12797 notes are available on
12798 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
12799 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
12800 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
12801 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
12802 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
12803 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
12804 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
12805 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
12806 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
12807
12808 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
12809 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
12810 </description>
12811         </item>
12812
12813         </channel>
12814 </rss>