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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          2nd November 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
  32 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
  33 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
  34 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
  35 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
  36
  37 <p><pre>
  38 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
  39 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
  40 # Provides:          rsyslog
  41 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
  42 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
  43 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
  44 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
  45 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
  46 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
  47 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
  48 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
  49 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
  50 ### END INIT INFO
  51 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
  52 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
  53 </pre></p>
  54
  55 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
  56 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
  57 info/comments.</p>
  58
  59 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
  60 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
  61
  62 <p><pre>
  63 #!/bin/sh
  64
  65 # Define LSB log_* functions.
  66 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
  67 # and status_of_proc is working.
  68 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
  69
  70 #
  71 # Function that starts the daemon/service
  72
  73 #
  74 do_start()
  75 {
  76         # Return
  77         #   0 if daemon has been started
  78         #   1 if daemon was already running
  79         #   2 if daemon could not be started
  80         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
  81                 || return 1
  82         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
  83                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
  84                 || return 2
  85         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
  86         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
  87         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
  88 }
  89
  90 #
  91 # Function that stops the daemon/service
  92 #
  93 do_stop()
  94 {
  95         # Return
  96         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
  97         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
  98         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
  99         #   other if a failure occurred
 100         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 101         RETVAL="$?"
 102         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
 103         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
 104         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
 105         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
 106         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
 107         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
 108         # sleep for some time.
 109         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
 110         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
 111         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
 112         rm -f $PIDFILE
 113         return "$RETVAL"
 114 }
 115
 116 #
 117 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
 118 #
 119 do_reload() {
 120         #
 121         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
 122         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
 123         # then implement that here.
 124         #
 125         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
 126         return 0
 127 }
 128
 129 SCRIPTNAME=$1
 130 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
 131 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
 132 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
 133     script="$1"
 134     shift
 135     . $script
 136 else
 137     exit 0
 138 fi
 139
 140 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
 141 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
 142
 143 # Exit if the package is not installed
 144 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
 145
 146 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
 147 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
 148
 149 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
 150 . /lib/init/vars.sh
 151
 152 case "$1" in
 153   start)
 154         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
 155         do_start
 156         case "$?" in
 157                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 158                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 159         esac
 160         ;;
 161   stop)
 162         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
 163         do_stop
 164         case "$?" in
 165                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
 166                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
 167         esac
 168         ;;
 169   status)
 170         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
 171         ;;
 172   #reload|force-reload)
 173         #
 174         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
 175         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
 176         #
 177         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
 178         #do_reload
 179         #log_end_msg $?
 180         #;;
 181   restart|force-reload)
 182         #
 183         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
 184         # 'force-reload' alias
 185         #
 186         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
 187         do_stop
 188         case "$?" in
 189           0|1)
 190                 do_start
 191                 case "$?" in
 192                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
 193                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
 194                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
 195                 esac
 196                 ;;
 197           *)
 198                 # Failed to stop
 199                 log_end_msg 1
 200                 ;;
 201         esac
 202         ;;
 203   *)
 204         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
 205         exit 3
 206         ;;
 207 esac
 208
 209 :
 210 </pre></p>
 211
 212 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
 213 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
 214 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
 215 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
 216
 217 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
 218 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
 219 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
 220 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
 221 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in year.</p>
 222
 223       </div>
 224       <div class="tags">
 225
 226
 227         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 228
 229
 230       </div>
 231     </div>
 232     <div class="padding"></div>
 233
 234     <div class="entry">
 235       <div class="title">
 236         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
 237       </div>
 238       <div class="date">
 239          1st November 2013
 240       </div>
 241       <div class="body">
 242         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
 243 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
 244 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
 245 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
 246 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
 247 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
 248 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
 249 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
 250 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
 251 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
 252 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
 253 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
 254
 255 <p>The source is now available from
 256 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
 257
 258       </div>
 259       <div class="tags">
 260
 261
 262         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 263
 264
 265       </div>
 266     </div>
 267     <div class="padding"></div>
 268
 269     <div class="entry">
 270       <div class="title">
 271         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
 272       </div>
 273       <div class="date">
 274         27th October 2013
 275       </div>
 276       <div class="body">
 277         <p>The
 278 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
 279 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
 280 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
 281 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
 282 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
 283 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
 284 of a plan to simplify the build system for
 285 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
 286 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
 287 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
 288 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
 289 Raspberry Pi.</p>
 290
 291 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
 292 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
 293 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
 294 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
 295 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
 296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
 297 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
 298 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
 299 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
 300 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
 301 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
 302 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
 303 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
 304 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
 305 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
 306 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
 307 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
 308 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
 309 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
 310 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
 311 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
 312 available from
 313 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
 314 upstream project page</a>.</p>
 315
 316 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
 317 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
 318 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
 319 list:</p>
 320
 321 <p><pre>
 322 #!/bin/sh
 323 set -e # Exit on first error
 324 rootdir="$1"
 325 cd "$rootdir"
 326 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
 327 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 328 EOF
 329 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
 330 # install a kernel somewhere too.
 331 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
 332     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 333 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 334 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
 335 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
 336 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
 337 </pre></p>
 338
 339 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
 340 to build the image:</p>
 341
 342 <pre>
 343 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
 344     --variant minbase \
 345     --arch armel \
 346     --distribution jessie \
 347     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 348     --image test.img \
 349     --size 600M \
 350     --bootsize 64M \
 351     --boottype vfat \
 352     --log-level debug \
 353     --verbose \
 354     --no-kernel \
 355     --no-extlinux \
 356     --root-password raspberry \
 357     --hostname raspberrypi \
 358     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 359     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 360     --package netbase \
 361     --package git-core \
 362     --package binutils \
 363     --package ca-certificates \
 364     --package wget \
 365     --package kmod
 366 </pre></p>
 367
 368 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 369 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 370 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 371 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 372 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 373 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 374 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 375
 376 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 377 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 378 build dependency list.</p>
 379
 380 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 381 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 382 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 383 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 384
 385       </div>
 386       <div class="tags">
 387
 388
 389         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
 390
 391
 392       </div>
 393     </div>
 394     <div class="padding"></div>
 395
 396     <div class="entry">
 397       <div class="title">
 398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
 399       </div>
 400       <div class="date">
 401         15th October 2013
 402       </div>
 403       <div class="body">
 404         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
 405 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
 406 these. :)</p>
 407
 408 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
 409 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
 410 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
 411 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
 412 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
 413 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
 414 hope you will to. :)</p>
 415
 416 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
 417 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
 418 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
 419 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
 420 donated.  Are you next?</p>
 421
 422 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
 423 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
 424 statement under the heading
 425 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
 426 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
 427 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
 428 too.</p>
 429
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="tags">
 432
 433
 434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 435
 436
 437       </div>
 438     </div>
 439     <div class="padding"></div>
 440
 441     <div class="entry">
 442       <div class="title">
 443         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
 444       </div>
 445       <div class="date">
 446         27th September 2013
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="body">
 449         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
 450 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
 451 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
 452 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
 453
 454 <ul>
 455
 456 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
 457 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
 458
 459 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
 460 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 461
 462 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
 463 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
 464 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
 465 (Youtube)</li>
 466
 467 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
 468 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
 469
 470 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
 471 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 472
 473 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
 474 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 475 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
 476
 477 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
 478 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
 479 (Youtube)</li>
 480
 481 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
 482 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
 483
 484 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
 485 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
 486
 487 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
 488 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 489 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
 490
 491 </ul>
 492
 493 <p>A larger list is available from
 494 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
 495 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
 496
 497 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 498 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 499 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 500 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 501 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 502 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 503 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 504 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
 505 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
 506 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 507 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 508
 509       </div>
 510       <div class="tags">
 511
 512
 513         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 514
 515
 516       </div>
 517     </div>
 518     <div class="padding"></div>
 519
 520     <div class="entry">
 521       <div class="title">
 522         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
 523       </div>
 524       <div class="date">
 525         10th September 2013
 526       </div>
 527       <div class="body">
 528         <p>I was introduced to the
 529 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
 530 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 531 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 532 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 533 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 534 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 535 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 536 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
 537
 538 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 539 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 540 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
 541 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 542 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
 543
 544 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
 545 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 546 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 547 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 548 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 549 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
 550 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 551 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 552 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 553 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
 554 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 555 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 556 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 557 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 558 missing in Debian).</p>
 559
 560 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 561 scripts
 562 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
 563 and a administrative web interface
 564 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
 565 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 566 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
 567 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 568 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
 569 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 570 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
 571 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 572 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 573 this is really working yet, see
 574 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
 575 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 576 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 577 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 578 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 579 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 580 with lots of half baked features.</p>
 581
 582 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 583 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 584 at.</p>
 585
 586 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
 587
 588 <ol>
 589
 590 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
 591 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
 592 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 593 to the Debian installer:<p>
 594 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
 595
 596 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 597 install on.</li>
 598
 599 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 600 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
 601
 602 </ol>
 603
 604 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
 605
 606 <ol>
 607
 608 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
 609 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
 610 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
 611 <pre>
 612 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
 613 </pre></li>
 614 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
 615 <pre>
 616 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 617    apt-key add -
 618 apt-get update
 619 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 620 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 621 </pre></li>
 622 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
 623
 624 </ol>
 625
 626 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 627 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 628 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 629 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 630 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 631
 632 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 633 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 634 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 635 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 636
 637 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 638 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 639 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 640 irc.debian.org and the
 641 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 642 mailing list</a>.</p>
 643
 644 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 645 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 646 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 647 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 648 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 649 default password is 'secret'.</p>
 650
 651       </div>
 652       <div class="tags">
 653
 654
 655         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 656
 657
 658       </div>
 659     </div>
 660     <div class="padding"></div>
 661
 662     <div class="entry">
 663       <div class="title">
 664         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
 665       </div>
 666       <div class="date">
 667         18th August 2013
 668       </div>
 669       <div class="body">
 670         <p>Earlier, I reported about
 671 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
 672 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
 673 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
 674 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
 675 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
 676 currently on the disk.</p>
 677
 678 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
 679 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
 680 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
 681 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
 682 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
 683 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
 684 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
 685 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
 686 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
 687 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
 688 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
 689 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
 690 the broken disks.</p>
 691
 692       </div>
 693       <div class="tags">
 694
 695
 696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 697
 698
 699       </div>
 700     </div>
 701     <div class="padding"></div>
 702
 703     <div class="entry">
 704       <div class="title">
 705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
 706       </div>
 707       <div class="date">
 708         17th July 2013
 709       </div>
 710       <div class="body">
 711         <p>Today I switched to
 712 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
 713 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
 714 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
 715 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
 716 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
 717 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
 718 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
 719 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
 720 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
 721 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
 722 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
 723 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
 724 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
 725 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
 726 station from now on.</p>
 727
 728 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
 729 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
 730 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
 731 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
 732 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
 733 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
 734 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
 735 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
 736 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
 737 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
 738 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
 739 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
 740
 741 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
 742 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
 743 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
 744 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
 745 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
 746 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
 747 parameters are tuned:</p>
 748
 749 <ul>
 750
 751 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
 752     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
 753
 754 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
 755     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
 756     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
 757
 758 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
 759     systems.</li>
 760
 761 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
 762     /etc/fstab.</li>
 763
 764 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
 765
 766 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
 767     cron.daily).</li>
 768
 769 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
 770     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
 771
 772 </ul>
 773
 774 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
 775 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
 776 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
 777 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
 778 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
 779 from getting the data on the disk (see
 780 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
 781 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
 782 right thing to do.</p>
 783
 784 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 785 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 786 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
 787
 788 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
 789 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 790 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 791 instead of during my work.</p>
 792
 793 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 794 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
 795
 796 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 797 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 798 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
 799
 800 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 801 there.</p>
 802
 803 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 804 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
 805 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
 806 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
 807 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
 808 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
 809 back.</p>
 810
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="tags">
 813
 814
 815         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 816
 817
 818       </div>
 819     </div>
 820     <div class="padding"></div>
 821
 822     <div class="entry">
 823       <div class="title">
 824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="date">
 827         10th July 2013
 828       </div>
 829       <div class="body">
 830         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
 831 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
 832 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
 833 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
 834 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
 835 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
 836 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
 837 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
 838
 839 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
 840 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
 841 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
 842 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
 843 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
 844 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
 845 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
 846 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
 847 lock up when I download a new
 848 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
 849 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
 850 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
 851
 852 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 853 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
 854 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 855 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
 856 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 857 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 858
 859 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 860 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
 861 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 862 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
 863 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 864 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 865
 866 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
 867 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
 868 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
 869 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
 870 exist).</p>
 871
 872       </div>
 873       <div class="tags">
 874
 875
 876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 877
 878
 879       </div>
 880     </div>
 881     <div class="padding"></div>
 882
 883     <div class="entry">
 884       <div class="title">
 885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
 886       </div>
 887       <div class="date">
 888          9th July 2013
 889       </div>
 890       <div class="body">
 891         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
 892 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
 893 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 894 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
 895 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 896 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
 897 Bitraf</a>.</p>
 898
 899 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
 900 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
 901 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
 902 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
 903 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
 904
 905       </div>
 906       <div class="tags">
 907
 908
 909         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 910
 911
 912       </div>
 913     </div>
 914     <div class="padding"></div>
 915
 916     <div class="entry">
 917       <div class="title">
 918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
 919       </div>
 920       <div class="date">
 921          5th July 2013
 922       </div>
 923       <div class="body">
 924         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
 925 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
 926 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
 927 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
 928 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
 929 ended up picking a
 930 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
 931 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
 932 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
 933 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
 934 on that below.</p>
 935
 936 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 937 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 938 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 939 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 940 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 941 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
 942 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
 943 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
 944 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
 945
 946 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
 947 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
 948 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
 949 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
 950 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
 951 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
 952 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
 953
 954 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
 955 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
 956
 957 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
 958 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
 959 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
 960 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
 961 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
 962 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
 963 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
 964 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
 965 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
 966 kernel developers as
 967 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
 968 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
 969 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
 970 Lenovo forums, both for
 971 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
 972 2012-11-10</a> and for
 973 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
 974 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
 975 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
 976 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
 977 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
 978 There is even a
 979 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
 980 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
 981 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
 982
 983 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
 984 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
 985 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
 986 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
 987 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
 988 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
 989 fixed. :)</p>
 990
 991       </div>
 992       <div class="tags">
 993
 994
 995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 996
 997
 998       </div>
 999     </div>
1000     <div class="padding"></div>
1001
1002     <div class="entry">
1003       <div class="title">
1004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
1005       </div>
1006       <div class="date">
1007          4th July 2013
1008       </div>
1009       <div class="body">
1010         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1011 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1012 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
1013 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
1014 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
1015 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
1016 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1017 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1018 with an expencive door stop.</p>
1019
1020 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1021 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1022 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1023 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1024 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1025 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1026 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
1027
1028 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1029 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1030 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
1031 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1032 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1033 new laptop now. :)</p>
1034
1035 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
1036
1037       </div>
1038       <div class="tags">
1039
1040
1041         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1042
1043
1044       </div>
1045     </div>
1046     <div class="padding"></div>
1047
1048     <div class="entry">
1049       <div class="title">
1050         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
1051       </div>
1052       <div class="date">
1053         25th June 2013
1054       </div>
1055       <div class="body">
1056         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1057 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1058 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1059 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
1060 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1061 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
1062 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
1063 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1064 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1065 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1066 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
1067
1068 <p><pre>
1069 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1070 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1071 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1072 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1073 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1074 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1075 firmware-ipw2x00
1076 firmware-ipw2x00
1077 Preconfiguring packages ...
1078 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1079 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1080 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1081 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
1082 #
1083 </pre></p>
1084
1085 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1086 printed instead:</p>
1087
1088 <p><pre>
1089 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1090 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1091 #
1092 </pre></p>
1093
1094 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1095 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
1096
1097 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
1098 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1099 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
1100 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1101 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1102 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
1103 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1104 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
1105 machine.</p>
1106
1107 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1108 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1109 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
1110 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1111 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1112 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
1113
1114       </div>
1115       <div class="tags">
1116
1117
1118         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1119
1120
1121       </div>
1122     </div>
1123     <div class="padding"></div>
1124
1125     <div class="entry">
1126       <div class="title">
1127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
1128       </div>
1129       <div class="date">
1130         11th June 2013
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="body">
1133         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
1134 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
1135 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
1136 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
1137 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
1138 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
1139 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
1140 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
1141 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
1142 i915 driver used by the
1143 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
1144 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
1145
1146 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
1147 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
1148 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
1149 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
1150 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
1151
1152 <pre>
1153 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
1154 update-initramfs -u -k all
1155 </pre>
1156
1157 <p>Since March 2012 there is
1158 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
1159 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
1160 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
1161 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
1162 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
1163 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
1164 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
1165 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
1166 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
1167 number.</p>
1168
1169 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
1170 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
1171
1172 <p><pre>
1173 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
1174     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
1175     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
1176  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
1177  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
1178     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
1179  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
1180     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
1181  Latency: 0
1182  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
1183  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
1184  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
1185  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
1186  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
1187  Capabilities: <access denied>
1188  Kernel driver in use: i915
1189 </pre></p>
1190
1191 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
1192
1193 <p><pre>
1194 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
1195        ...
1196         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
1197         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
1198        ...
1199 }
1200 </pre></p>
1201
1202 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
1203 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
1204 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
1205 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
1206 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
1207 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
1208 yet shown up in
1209 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
1210 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
1211 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
1212 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
1213 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
1214 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
1215
1216 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
1217 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
1218 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
1219 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
1220 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
1221 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
1222 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
1223 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
1224 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
1225 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
1226 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
1227 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
1228
1229 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
1230 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
1231 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
1232 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
1233 backlight.</p>
1234
1235       </div>
1236       <div class="tags">
1237
1238
1239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1240
1241
1242       </div>
1243     </div>
1244     <div class="padding"></div>
1245
1246     <div class="entry">
1247       <div class="title">
1248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="date">
1251         27th May 2013
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="body">
1254         <p>Two days ago, I asked
1255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
1256 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
1257 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
1258 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
1259 and Windows 8.</p>
1260
1261 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
1262 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
1263 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
1264 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
1265 enough to tell.</p>
1266
1267 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
1268 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
1269 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
1270 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
1271 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
1272 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
1273 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
1274 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
1275 to follow.</p>
1276
1277 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
1278 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
1279 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
1280 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
1281 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
1282 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
1283 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
1284 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
1285
1286 <p>I've updated the
1287 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
1288 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
1289 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
1290 machine.</p>
1291
1292 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
1293 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
1294
1295       </div>
1296       <div class="tags">
1297
1298
1299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1300
1301
1302       </div>
1303     </div>
1304     <div class="padding"></div>
1305
1306     <div class="entry">
1307       <div class="title">
1308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
1309       </div>
1310       <div class="date">
1311         25th May 2013
1312       </div>
1313       <div class="body">
1314         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
1315 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
1316 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
1317 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
1318 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
1319 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
1320
1321 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
1322 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
1323 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
1324 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
1325 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
1326 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
1327 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
1328 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
1329 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
1330 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
1331
1332 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
1333 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
1334 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
1335 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
1336 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
1337 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
1338
1339 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
1340 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
1341 on new Laptops?</p>
1342
1343       </div>
1344       <div class="tags">
1345
1346
1347         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1348
1349
1350       </div>
1351     </div>
1352     <div class="padding"></div>
1353
1354     <div class="entry">
1355       <div class="title">
1356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
1357       </div>
1358       <div class="date">
1359         17th May 2013
1360       </div>
1361       <div class="body">
1362         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
1363 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
1364 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
1365 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
1366 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
1367 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
1368 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
1369 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
1370 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
1371 donate some money</a>.
1372
1373 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
1374 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
1375 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
1376 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
1377 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
1378
1379 <p>The script,
1380 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
1381 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
1382 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
1383 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
1384
1385 <ol>
1386
1387 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
1388 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
1389 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
1390     our configuration.</li>
1391 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
1392     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
1393     according to the profile specified in the config above,
1394     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
1395 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
1396     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
1397 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
1398
1399 </ol>
1400
1401 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
1402 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
1403 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
1404 the needed packages.</p>
1405
1406 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
1407 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
1408 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
1409 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
1410 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
1411 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
1412
1413 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
1414 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
1415 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
1416
1417 <p><pre>
1418 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
1419 DESKTOP="lxde"
1420 </pre></p>
1421
1422 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
1423 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
1424 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
1425 boot.</p>
1426
1427       </div>
1428       <div class="tags">
1429
1430
1431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1432
1433
1434       </div>
1435     </div>
1436     <div class="padding"></div>
1437
1438     <div class="entry">
1439       <div class="title">
1440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
1441       </div>
1442       <div class="date">
1443         11th May 2013
1444       </div>
1445       <div class="body">
1446         <P>In January,
1447 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
1448 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
1449 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
1450 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
1451 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
1452 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
1453 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
1454 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
1455 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
1456 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
1457 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
1458 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
1459
1460 <p><table>
1461 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
1462 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
1463 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
1464 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
1465 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
1466 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
1467 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
1468 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
1469 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
1470 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
1471 </table></p>
1472
1473 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
1474 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
1475 available in experimental.</p>
1476
1477 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
1478 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
1479 for LEGO designers.</p>
1480
1481       </div>
1482       <div class="tags">
1483
1484
1485         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1486
1487
1488       </div>
1489     </div>
1490     <div class="padding"></div>
1491
1492     <div class="entry">
1493       <div class="title">
1494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
1495       </div>
1496       <div class="date">
1497          5th May 2013
1498       </div>
1499       <div class="body">
1500         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
1501 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
1502 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
1503 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
1504 soon.</p>
1505
1506 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
1507 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
1508 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
1509 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
1510 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
1511 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
1512 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
1513 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
1514 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
1515 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
1516 Edu.</a>
1517
1518 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
1519 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
1520 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
1521 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
1522 follow.<p>
1523
1524       </div>
1525       <div class="tags">
1526
1527
1528         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1529
1530
1531       </div>
1532     </div>
1533     <div class="padding"></div>
1534
1535     <div class="entry">
1536       <div class="title">
1537         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
1538       </div>
1539       <div class="date">
1540          3rd April 2013
1541       </div>
1542       <div class="body">
1543         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
1544 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
1545 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
1546 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
1547
1548 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
1549 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
1550 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
1551 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
1552 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
1553 BTS. :)</p>
1554
1555       </div>
1556       <div class="tags">
1557
1558
1559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1560
1561
1562       </div>
1563     </div>
1564     <div class="padding"></div>
1565
1566     <div class="entry">
1567       <div class="title">
1568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
1569       </div>
1570       <div class="date">
1571          2nd February 2013
1572       </div>
1573       <div class="body">
1574         <p>My
1575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
1576 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
1577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
1578 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
1579 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
1580 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
1581 version too.</p>
1582
1583 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
1584 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
1585 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
1586 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
1587 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
1588 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
1589 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
1590 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
1591
1592 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
1593 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
1594 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
1595 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
1596 it. :)</p>
1597
1598 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1599 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1600 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1601
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="tags">
1604
1605
1606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1607
1608
1609       </div>
1610     </div>
1611     <div class="padding"></div>
1612
1613     <div class="entry">
1614       <div class="title">
1615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
1616       </div>
1617       <div class="date">
1618         22nd January 2013
1619       </div>
1620       <div class="body">
1621         <p>Yesterday, I
1622 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
1623 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1624 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1625 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
1626 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
1627 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1628 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1629 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1630 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
1631 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1632 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
1633 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
1634 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
1635
1636 <pre>
1637 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1638 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
1639 </pre>
1640
1641 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
1642 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1643 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1644 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
1645
1646 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1647 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
1648 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1649 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1650 word.</p>
1651
1652 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
1653 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1654 process.</p>
1655
1656 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1657 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
1658
1659       </div>
1660       <div class="tags">
1661
1662
1663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1664
1665
1666       </div>
1667     </div>
1668     <div class="padding"></div>
1669
1670     <div class="entry">
1671       <div class="title">
1672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="date">
1675         21st January 2013
1676       </div>
1677       <div class="body">
1678         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
1679 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
1680 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
1681 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1682 it, fetch the
1683 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
1684 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
1685 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1686 autostart script.</p>
1687
1688 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1689
1690 <ul>
1691
1692 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1693 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1694
1695 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1696 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1697 initially did.</li>
1698
1699 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1700 the APT database, a database
1701 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1702 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1703
1704 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1705 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1706 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1707 package or packages.</li>
1708
1709 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1710 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1711
1712 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1713 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1714
1715 </ul>
1716
1717 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1718 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1719 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1720 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1721
1722 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1723 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1724 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1725 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1726 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1727
1728 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1729 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1730 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1731 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1732 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1733 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1734 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1735 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1736
1737 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1738 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1739 '<tt>svn checkout
1740 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1741 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
1742 devscripts package.</p>
1743
1744 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1745 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1746 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1747 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1748 instructions</a> for details.</p>
1749
1750       </div>
1751       <div class="tags">
1752
1753
1754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
1755
1756
1757       </div>
1758     </div>
1759     <div class="padding"></div>
1760
1761     <div class="entry">
1762       <div class="title">
1763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
1764       </div>
1765       <div class="date">
1766         19th January 2013
1767       </div>
1768       <div class="body">
1769         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1770 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1771 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1772 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1773 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1774 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1775 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1776 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1777 not a durable solution.
1778
1779 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1780 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
1781
1782 <ul>
1783
1784 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1785   than A4).</li>
1786 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1787 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1788 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
1789 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1790 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1791 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1792 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1793 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1794 size).</li>
1795 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1796   X.org packages.</li>
1797 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1798   the time).
1799
1800 </ul>
1801
1802 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1803 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1804 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1805 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1806 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1807 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1808 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1809 still be useful.</p>
1810
1811 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1812 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1813 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1814 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1815 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1816 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1817
1818       </div>
1819       <div class="tags">
1820
1821
1822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1823
1824
1825       </div>
1826     </div>
1827     <div class="padding"></div>
1828
1829     <div class="entry">
1830       <div class="title">
1831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
1832       </div>
1833       <div class="date">
1834         18th January 2013
1835       </div>
1836       <div class="body">
1837         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1838 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1839 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1840 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1841 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1842 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1843 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1844
1845 <pre>
1846 #!/usr/bin/python
1847 import sys
1848 import apt
1849 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1850     cache = apt.Cache()
1851     cache.open(None)
1852     thepkgs = []
1853     for pkg in cache:
1854         version = pkg.candidate
1855         if version is None:
1856             version = pkg.installed
1857         if version is None:
1858             continue
1859         record = version.record
1860         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1861             continue
1862         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1863         for t in mime_types:
1864             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1865             if t == mimetype:
1866                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1867     return thepkgs
1868 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1869 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1870     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1871 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1872 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1873     print "  %s" %pkg
1874 </pre>
1875
1876 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1877
1878 <pre>
1879 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1880 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1881   gecko-mediaplayer
1882 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1883 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1884   browser-plugin-gnash
1885 %
1886 </pre>
1887
1888 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1889 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1890 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1891 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1892
1893 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1894 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1895 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1896 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1897 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1898 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1899
1900       </div>
1901       <div class="tags">
1902
1903
1904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1905
1906
1907       </div>
1908     </div>
1909     <div class="padding"></div>
1910
1911     <div class="entry">
1912       <div class="title">
1913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
1914       </div>
1915       <div class="date">
1916         16th January 2013
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="body">
1919         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1920 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1921 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1922 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1923 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1924 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1925 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1926 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1927
1928 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1929 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1930 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1931 can be found on the
1932 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1933 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1934 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1935 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1936 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1937
1938 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1939
1940 <pre>
1941   count MIME type
1942   ----- -----------------------
1943      32 text/plain
1944      30 audio/mpeg
1945      29 image/png
1946      28 image/jpeg
1947      27 application/ogg
1948      26 audio/x-mp3
1949      25 image/tiff
1950      25 image/gif
1951      22 image/bmp
1952      22 audio/x-wav
1953      20 audio/x-flac
1954      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1955      18 video/x-ms-asf
1956      18 audio/x-musepack
1957      18 audio/x-mpeg
1958      18 application/x-ogg
1959      17 video/mpeg
1960      17 audio/x-scpls
1961      17 audio/ogg
1962      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1963 </pre>
1964
1965 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1966
1967 <pre>
1968   count MIME type
1969   ----- -----------------------
1970      33 text/plain
1971      32 image/png
1972      32 image/jpeg
1973      29 audio/mpeg
1974      27 image/gif
1975      26 image/tiff
1976      26 application/ogg
1977      25 audio/x-mp3
1978      22 image/bmp
1979      21 audio/x-wav
1980      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1981      19 audio/x-mpeg
1982      18 video/mpeg
1983      18 audio/x-scpls
1984      18 audio/x-flac
1985      18 application/x-ogg
1986      17 video/x-ms-asf
1987      17 text/html
1988      17 audio/x-musepack
1989      16 image/x-xbitmap
1990 </pre>
1991
1992 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1993
1994 <pre>
1995   count MIME type
1996   ----- -----------------------
1997      31 text/plain
1998      31 image/png
1999      31 image/jpeg
2000      29 audio/mpeg
2001      28 application/ogg
2002      27 image/gif
2003      26 image/tiff
2004      26 audio/x-mp3
2005      23 audio/x-wav
2006      22 image/bmp
2007      21 audio/x-flac
2008      20 audio/x-mpegurl
2009      19 audio/x-mpeg
2010      18 video/x-ms-asf
2011      18 video/mpeg
2012      18 audio/x-scpls
2013      18 application/x-ogg
2014      17 audio/x-musepack
2015      16 video/x-ms-wmv
2016      16 video/x-msvideo
2017 </pre>
2018
2019 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
2020 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
2021 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
2022 issues.</p>
2023
2024 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
2025 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
2026
2027       </div>
2028       <div class="tags">
2029
2030
2031         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2032
2033
2034       </div>
2035     </div>
2036     <div class="padding"></div>
2037
2038     <div class="entry">
2039       <div class="title">
2040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
2041       </div>
2042       <div class="date">
2043         15th January 2013
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="body">
2046         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
2047 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
2048 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
2049 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
2050 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
2051 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
2052 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
2053 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
2054 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
2055 packages.</p>
2056
2057 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
2058 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
2059 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
2060 modalias.</p>
2061
2062 <p><blockquote>
2063 Package: package-name
2064 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
2065 </blockquote></p>
2066
2067 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
2068 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
2069
2070 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
2071 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
2072
2073 <p><blockquote>
2074 Package: cheese
2075 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
2076 </blockquote></p>
2077
2078 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
2079 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
2080
2081 <p><blockquote>
2082 Package: pcmciautils
2083 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
2084 </blockquote></p>
2085
2086 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
2087 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
2088
2089 <p><blockquote>
2090 Package: colorhug-client
2091 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
2092 </blockquote></p>
2093
2094 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
2095 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
2096 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
2097
2098 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
2099 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
2100 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
2101 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
2102 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
2103 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
2104 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
2105 Raring.</p>
2106
2107 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
2108 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
2109 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
2110 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
2111 try the
2112 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
2113 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
2114 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
2115 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
2116
2117 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
2118 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
2119
2120 <p><blockquote>
2121 % ./hw-support-lookup
2122 <br>yubikey-personalization
2123 <br>%
2124 </blockquote></p>
2125
2126 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
2127 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
2128
2129 <p><blockquote>
2130 % ./hw-support-lookup
2131 <br>pcmciautils
2132 <br>%
2133 </blockquote></p>
2134
2135 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
2136 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
2137 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
2138
2139 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
2140 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
2141 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
2142 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
2143 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
2144 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
2145 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
2146 see if it work.</p>
2147
2148 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2149 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2150 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2151 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2152
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="tags">
2155
2156
2157         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2158
2159
2160       </div>
2161     </div>
2162     <div class="padding"></div>
2163
2164     <div class="entry">
2165       <div class="title">
2166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
2167       </div>
2168       <div class="date">
2169         14th January 2013
2170       </div>
2171       <div class="body">
2172         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
2173 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
2174 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
2175 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
2176 in
2177 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2178 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
2179
2180 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
2181
2182 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
2183 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
2184 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
2185 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
2186 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
2187 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
2188
2189 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
2190 this shell script:</p>
2191
2192 <pre>
2193 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
2194 </pre>
2195
2196 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
2197 using modinfo:</p>
2198
2199 <pre>
2200 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
2201 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
2202 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
2203 %
2204 </pre>
2205
2206 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
2207
2208 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
2209 Bridge memory controller:</p>
2210
2211 <p><blockquote>
2212 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
2213 </blockquote></p>
2214
2215 <p>This represent these values:</p>
2216
2217 <pre>
2218  v   00008086  (vendor)
2219  d   00002770  (device)
2220  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
2221  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
2222  bc  06        (bus class)
2223  sc  00        (bus subclass)
2224  i   00        (interface)
2225 </pre>
2226
2227 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
2228 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
2229 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
2230 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
2231
2232 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
2233 means.</p>
2234
2235 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
2236
2237 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
2238 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
2239
2240 <p><blockquote>
2241 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
2242 </blockquote></p>
2243
2244 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
2245
2246 <pre>
2247  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
2248  p    0001  (device product)
2249  d    0206  (bcddevice)
2250  dc     09  (device class)
2251  dsc    00  (device subclass)
2252  dp     00  (device protocol)
2253  ic     09  (interface class)
2254  isc    00  (interface subclass)
2255  ip     00  (interface protocol)
2256 </pre>
2257
2258 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
2259 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
2260 these alias entries show up:</p>
2261
2262 <p><blockquote>
2263 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
2264 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
2265 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
2266 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
2267 </blockquote></p>
2268
2269 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
2270 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
2271 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
2272
2273 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
2274
2275 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
2276 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
2277
2278 <p><blockquote>
2279 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2280 </blockquote></p>
2281
2282 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
2283
2284 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
2285
2286 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
2287 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
2288 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
2289
2290 <p><blockquote>
2291 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
2292 </blockquote></p>
2293
2294 <p>The values present are</p>
2295
2296 <pre>
2297  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
2298  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
2299  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
2300  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
2301  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
2302  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
2303  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
2304  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
2305  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
2306  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
2307  ct   10             (chassis type)
2308  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
2309 </pre>
2310
2311 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
2312 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
2313
2314 <pre>
2315   3 Desktop
2316   4 Low Profile Desktop
2317   5 Pizza Box
2318   6 Mini Tower
2319   7 Tower
2320   8 Portable
2321   9 Laptop
2322  10 Notebook
2323  11 Hand Held
2324  12 Docking Station
2325  13 All In One
2326  14 Sub Notebook
2327  15 Space-saving
2328  16 Lunch Box
2329  17 Main Server Chassis
2330  18 Expansion Chassis
2331  19 Sub Chassis
2332  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
2333  21 Peripheral Chassis
2334  22 RAID Chassis
2335  23 Rack Mount Chassis
2336  24 Sealed-case PC
2337  25 Multi-system
2338  26 CompactPCI
2339  27 AdvancedTCA
2340  28 Blade
2341  29 Blade Enclosing
2342 </pre>
2343
2344 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
2345 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
2346 claim it is a desktop.</p>
2347
2348 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
2349
2350 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
2351 test machine:</p>
2352
2353 <p><blockquote>
2354 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
2355 </blockquote></p>
2356
2357 <p>The values present are</p>
2358
2359 <pre>
2360   ty  01  (type)
2361   pr  00  (prototype)
2362   id  00  (id)
2363   ex  00  (extra)
2364 </pre>
2365
2366 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
2367 the valid values are.</p>
2368
2369 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
2370
2371 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
2372 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
2373 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
2374 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
2375 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
2376 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
2377 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
2378
2379 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
2380
2381 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
2382 one can use the following shell script:</p>
2383
2384 <pre>
2385   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
2386     echo "$id" ; \
2387     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
2388   done
2389 </pre>
2390
2391 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
2392 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
2393
2394 <pre>
2395   acpi:ACPI0003:
2396     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
2397   acpi:device:
2398   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
2399   acpi:IBM0068:
2400     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
2401     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
2402     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
2403     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
2404   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
2405     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
2406     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
2407     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
2408   [...]
2409 </pre>
2410
2411 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
2412 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
2413 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
2414 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
2415
2416 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
2417 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
2418 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
2419
2420       </div>
2421       <div class="tags">
2422
2423
2424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2425
2426
2427       </div>
2428     </div>
2429     <div class="padding"></div>
2430
2431     <div class="entry">
2432       <div class="title">
2433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
2434       </div>
2435       <div class="date">
2436         10th January 2013
2437       </div>
2438       <div class="body">
2439         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
2440 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
2441 Launcher and updated the Debian package
2442 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
2443 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
2444 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
2445 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
2446 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
2447 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
2448 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
2449 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
2450 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
2451 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
2452 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
2453 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
2454 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
2455 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
2456 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
2457
2458       </div>
2459       <div class="tags">
2460
2461
2462         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2463
2464
2465       </div>
2466     </div>
2467     <div class="padding"></div>
2468
2469     <div class="entry">
2470       <div class="title">
2471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
2472       </div>
2473       <div class="date">
2474          9th January 2013
2475       </div>
2476       <div class="body">
2477         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
2478 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
2479 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
2480 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
2481 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
2482 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
2483 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
2484 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
2485 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
2486 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
2487 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
2488
2489 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
2490 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
2491 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
2492 simple:
2493
2494 <ul>
2495
2496 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
2497   starting when a user log in.</li>
2498
2499 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
2500   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
2501
2502 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
2503   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
2504   packages.</li>
2505
2506 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
2507   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
2508
2509 </ul>
2510
2511 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
2512 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
2513 discover database to find packages and
2514 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
2515 packages.</p>
2516
2517 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
2518 draft package is now checked into
2519 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
2520 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
2521 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
2522 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
2523 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
2524 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
2525 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
2526 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
2527 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
2528 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
2529 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
2530 because of the freeze).</p>
2531
2532 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
2533 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
2534 inserted):</p>
2535
2536 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
2537
2538 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
2539 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
2540 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
2541
2542 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
2543 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
2544 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
2545 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
2546 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
2547 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
2548 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
2549
2550 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
2551 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
2552 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
2553 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
2554 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
2555 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
2556 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
2557 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
2558 not be installed?</p>
2559
2560 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
2561 please send me an email. :)</p>
2562
2563       </div>
2564       <div class="tags">
2565
2566
2567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2568
2569
2570       </div>
2571     </div>
2572     <div class="padding"></div>
2573
2574     <div class="entry">
2575       <div class="title">
2576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
2577       </div>
2578       <div class="date">
2579          2nd January 2013
2580       </div>
2581       <div class="body">
2582         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
2583 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
2584 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
2585 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
2586 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
2587 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
2588 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
2589 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
2590 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
2591 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
2592
2593 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
2594 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
2595 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
2596
2597       </div>
2598       <div class="tags">
2599
2600
2601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
2602
2603
2604       </div>
2605     </div>
2606     <div class="padding"></div>
2607
2608     <div class="entry">
2609       <div class="title">
2610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
2611       </div>
2612       <div class="date">
2613         25th December 2012
2614       </div>
2615       <div class="body">
2616         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2617 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
2618
2619 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
2620 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2621 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2622 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2623 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
2624 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
2625 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2626 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
2627 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2628 name.</p>
2629
2630 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2631 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2632 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
2633
2634 <blockquote><pre>
2635 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2636 cd bitcoin
2637 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2638 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2639 </pre></blockquote>
2640
2641 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
2642 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2643 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
2644 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
2645 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
2646 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2647 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2648 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2649 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
2650
2651 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2652 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2653 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2654
2655       </div>
2656       <div class="tags">
2657
2658
2659         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2660
2661
2662       </div>
2663     </div>
2664     <div class="padding"></div>
2665
2666     <div class="entry">
2667       <div class="title">
2668         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="date">
2671         21st December 2012
2672       </div>
2673       <div class="body">
2674         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
2675 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
2676 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2677 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
2678 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
2679 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
2680 is now maintained by a
2681 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
2682 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
2683 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2684 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2685 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2686 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2687 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2688 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2689 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2690 Corallo in a
2691 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2692 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2693 Debian package.</p>
2694
2695 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2696 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2697 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2698 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2699 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2700 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2701 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2702 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2703 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2704 new version to unstable.
2705
2706 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2707 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2708 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2709 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2710 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2711 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2712 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2713 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2714 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2715 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2716 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2717 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2718 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2719 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2720 have not tested them.</p>
2721
2722 <p>My
2723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2724 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2725 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2726 years ago, as can be
2727 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2728 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
2729 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2730 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2731 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2732 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2733 the same address as last time,
2734 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2735
2736       </div>
2737       <div class="tags">
2738
2739
2740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2741
2742
2743       </div>
2744     </div>
2745     <div class="padding"></div>
2746
2747     <div class="entry">
2748       <div class="title">
2749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2750       </div>
2751       <div class="date">
2752          7th September 2012
2753       </div>
2754       <div class="body">
2755         <p>As I
2756 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2757 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2758 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2759 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2760 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2761
2762 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2763 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2764 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2765 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2766
2767 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2768 PostScript formats at
2769 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2770 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2771
2772       </div>
2773       <div class="tags">
2774
2775
2776         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2777
2778
2779       </div>
2780     </div>
2781     <div class="padding"></div>
2782
2783     <div class="entry">
2784       <div class="title">
2785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
2786       </div>
2787       <div class="date">
2788         16th August 2012
2789       </div>
2790       <div class="body">
2791         <p>I dag fyller
2792 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
2793 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
2794 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
2795
2796       </div>
2797       <div class="tags">
2798
2799
2800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
2801
2802
2803       </div>
2804     </div>
2805     <div class="padding"></div>
2806
2807     <div class="entry">
2808       <div class="title">
2809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="date">
2812         24th June 2012
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="body">
2815         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2816 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2817 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
2818 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2819 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2820 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
2821 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2822 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2823 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
2824 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
2825 missing in my book.</p>
2826
2827 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2828 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2829 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2830 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
2831 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
2832 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
2833 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2834
2835       </div>
2836       <div class="tags">
2837
2838
2839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2840
2841
2842       </div>
2843     </div>
2844     <div class="padding"></div>
2845
2846     <div class="entry">
2847       <div class="title">
2848         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
2849       </div>
2850       <div class="date">
2851         21st November 2011
2852       </div>
2853       <div class="body">
2854         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
2855 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
2856 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
2857 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
2858 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
2859 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
2860 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
2861 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
2862 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
2863 the tools to do so.</p>
2864
2865 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
2866 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
2867 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
2868 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
2869
2870 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
2871 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
2872 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
2873 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
2874 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
2875 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
2876 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
2877 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
2878
2879 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
2880 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
2881 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
2882
2883 <p><pre>
2884 #!/usr/bin/perl
2885 use strict;
2886 use warnings;
2887 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
2888 BEGIN {
2889     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
2890     my %rhelmodules = (
2891         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
2892         );
2893     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
2894         eval "use $module;";
2895         if ($@) {
2896             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
2897             system("yum install -y $pkg");
2898             eval "use $module;";
2899         }
2900     }
2901 }
2902 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
2903
2904 upgrade_dell();
2905
2906 exit 0;
2907
2908 sub run_firmware_script {
2909     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
2910     unless ($script) {
2911         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
2912         exit 1
2913     }
2914     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
2915
2916     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
2917         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
2918     } else {
2919         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
2920     }
2921 }
2922
2923 sub run_firmware_scripts {
2924     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
2925     # Run firmware packages
2926     for my $dir (@dirs) {
2927         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
2928         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
2929         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
2930             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
2931             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
2932         }
2933         closedir $dh;
2934     }
2935 }
2936
2937 sub download {
2938     my $url = shift;
2939     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
2940     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
2941 }
2942
2943 sub upgrade_dell {
2944     my @dirs;
2945     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2946     chomp $product;
2947
2948     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
2949
2950         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
2951         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
2952
2953         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
2954             CLEANUP => 1
2955             );
2956         chdir($tmpdir);
2957         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
2958         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
2959         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
2960         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
2961         my $fwopts = "-q";
2962         if (@paths) {
2963             for my $url (@paths) {
2964                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
2965             }
2966             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
2967         } else {
2968             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2969             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2970         }
2971         chdir('/');
2972     } else {
2973         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2974         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2975     }
2976 }
2977
2978 sub fetch_dell_fw {
2979     my $path = shift;
2980     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
2981     download($url);
2982 }
2983
2984 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
2985 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
2986 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
2987 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
2988     my $filename = shift;
2989
2990     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2991     chomp $product;
2992     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
2993
2994     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
2995
2996     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
2997     my @paths;
2998     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
2999         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
3000         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
3001         my $oscode;
3002         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
3003             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
3004         } else {
3005             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
3006         }
3007         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
3008         {
3009             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
3010         }
3011     }
3012     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
3013         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
3014
3015         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
3016         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
3017
3018         my $cpath = $component->{path};
3019         for my $path (@paths) {
3020             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
3021                 push(@paths, $cpath);
3022             }
3023         }
3024     }
3025     return @paths;
3026 }
3027 </pre>
3028
3029 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
3030 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
3031 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
3032 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
3033 outdated.</p>
3034
3035       </div>
3036       <div class="tags">
3037
3038
3039         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3040
3041
3042       </div>
3043     </div>
3044     <div class="padding"></div>
3045
3046     <div class="entry">
3047       <div class="title">
3048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
3049       </div>
3050       <div class="date">
3051          4th August 2011
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="body">
3054         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
3055 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
3056 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
3057 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
3058 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
3059 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
3060 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
3061 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
3062 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
3063
3064 <p><blockquote>
3065 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
3066 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
3067 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
3068 </blockquote></p>
3069
3070 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
3071 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
3072 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
3073 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
3074 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
3075 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
3076 hard to explain.</p>
3077
3078 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
3079 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
3080 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
3081 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
3082 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
3083 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
3084 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
3085 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
3086 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
3087 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
3088 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
3089 mode).</p>
3090
3091 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
3092 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
3093 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
3094 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
3095 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
3096 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
3097 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
3098 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
3099 after visiting single user mode.</p>
3100
3101 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
3102 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
3103 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
3104 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
3105 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
3106 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
3107 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
3108 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
3109
3110 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
3111 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
3112 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
3113
3114       </div>
3115       <div class="tags">
3116
3117
3118         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3119
3120
3121       </div>
3122     </div>
3123     <div class="padding"></div>
3124
3125     <div class="entry">
3126       <div class="title">
3127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
3128       </div>
3129       <div class="date">
3130         30th July 2011
3131       </div>
3132       <div class="body">
3133         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
3134 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
3135 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
3136 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
3137 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
3138 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
3139 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
3140 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
3141 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
3142 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
3143 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
3144 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
3145 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
3146
3147 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
3148 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
3149 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
3150 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
3151 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
3152 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
3153 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
3154 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
3155 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
3156
3157 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
3158 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
3159 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
3160 is presented.</p>
3161
3162 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
3163 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
3164 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
3165 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
3166 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
3167 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
3168 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
3169 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
3170 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
3171 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
3172 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
3173 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
3174 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
3175 find time to push this forward.</p>
3176
3177       </div>
3178       <div class="tags">
3179
3180
3181         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3182
3183
3184       </div>
3185     </div>
3186     <div class="padding"></div>
3187
3188     <div class="entry">
3189       <div class="title">
3190         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
3191       </div>
3192       <div class="date">
3193         29th July 2011
3194       </div>
3195       <div class="body">
3196         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
3197 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
3198 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
3199 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
3200 issues.</p>
3201
3202 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
3203 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
3204 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
3205
3206 <ol>
3207
3208 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
3209 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
3210 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
3211 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
3212 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
3213 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
3214 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
3215 Debian.</li>
3216
3217 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
3218 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
3219 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
3220 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
3221 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
3222 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
3223 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
3224 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
3225 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
3226 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
3227 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
3228 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
3229 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
3230
3231 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
3232 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
3233 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
3234 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
3235 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
3236 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
3237 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
3238 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
3239 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
3240 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
3241
3242 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
3243 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
3244 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
3245 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
3246 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
3247 latter behaviour.</li>
3248
3249 </ol>
3250
3251 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
3252 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
3253 it do not matter much.</p>
3254
3255 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
3256 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
3257 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
3258
3259       </div>
3260       <div class="tags">
3261
3262
3263         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3264
3265
3266       </div>
3267     </div>
3268     <div class="padding"></div>
3269
3270     <div class="entry">
3271       <div class="title">
3272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
3273       </div>
3274       <div class="date">
3275         26th July 2011
3276       </div>
3277       <div class="body">
3278         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
3279 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
3280 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
3281 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
3282 security support for a few years.</p>
3283
3284 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
3285 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
3286 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
3287 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
3288 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
3289 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
3290 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
3291 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
3292 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
3293 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
3294 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
3295 easier in the future.</p>
3296
3297 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
3298 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
3299 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
3300 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
3301 do not have time for.</p>
3302
3303       </div>
3304       <div class="tags">
3305
3306
3307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
3308
3309
3310       </div>
3311     </div>
3312     <div class="padding"></div>
3313
3314     <div class="entry">
3315       <div class="title">
3316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
3317       </div>
3318       <div class="date">
3319          3rd April 2011
3320       </div>
3321       <div class="body">
3322         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
3323 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
3324 update in English.</p>
3325
3326 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
3327 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
3328 of the British service
3329 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
3330 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
3331 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
3332 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
3333 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
3334 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
3335 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
3336 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
3337 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
3338 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
3339 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
3340 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
3341 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
3342
3343 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
3344 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
3345 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
3346 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
3347 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
3348 public infrastructure.</p>
3349
3350 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
3351 such service?</p>
3352
3353       </div>
3354       <div class="tags">
3355
3356
3357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
3358
3359
3360       </div>
3361     </div>
3362     <div class="padding"></div>
3363
3364     <div class="entry">
3365       <div class="title">
3366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
3367       </div>
3368       <div class="date">
3369         28th January 2011
3370       </div>
3371       <div class="body">
3372         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
3373 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
3374 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
3375 available on the Internet, and check our locally
3376 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
3377 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
3378 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
3379 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
3380 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
3381 out which security holes were present in our free software
3382 collection.</p>
3383
3384 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
3385 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
3386 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
3387 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
3388 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
3389 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
3390 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
3391 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
3392 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
3393 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
3394 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
3395 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
3396 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
3397 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
3398 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
3399 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
3400
3401 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
3402 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
3403 check out, one could look up
3404 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
3405 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
3406 The most recent one is
3407 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
3408 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
3409 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
3410
3411 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
3412 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
3413 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
3414 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
3415 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
3416 security issues out.</p>
3417
3418 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
3419 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
3420 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
3421 RHEL is providing
3422 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
3423 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
3424 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
3425
3426 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
3427 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
3428 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
3429 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
3430 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
3431 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
3432 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
3433 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
3434 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
3435 established soon.</p>
3436
3437 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
3438 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
3439 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
3440 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
3441 for their packages.</p>
3442
3443       </div>
3444       <div class="tags">
3445
3446
3447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3448
3449
3450       </div>
3451     </div>
3452     <div class="padding"></div>
3453
3454     <div class="entry">
3455       <div class="title">
3456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
3457       </div>
3458       <div class="date">
3459         23rd January 2011
3460       </div>
3461       <div class="body">
3462         <p>In the
3463 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
3464 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
3465 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
3466 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
3467 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
3468 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
3469 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
3470 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
3471 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
3472 one of my machines like this:</p>
3473
3474 <pre>
3475 loaded modules:
3476 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
3477 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
3478 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
3479 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
3480 10de:03ec pata_amd
3481 10de:03f6 sata_nv
3482 1022:1103 k8temp
3483 109e:036e bttv
3484 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
3485 11ab:4364 sky2
3486 </pre>
3487
3488 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
3489 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
3490
3491 <pre>
3492 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
3493     echo loaded pci modules:
3494     (
3495         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
3496         for address in * ; do
3497             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3498                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3499                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3500                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3501                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
3502                     echo "$id $module"
3503                 fi
3504             fi
3505         done
3506     )
3507     echo
3508 fi
3509 </pre>
3510
3511 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
3512 mappings:</p>
3513
3514 <pre>
3515 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
3516     echo loaded usb modules:
3517     (
3518         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
3519         for address in * ; do
3520             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
3521                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
3522                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
3523                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
3524                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
3525                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
3526                         echo "$id $module"
3527                     fi
3528                 fi
3529             fi
3530         done
3531     )
3532     echo
3533 fi
3534 </pre>
3535
3536 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
3537 well.</p>
3538
3539       </div>
3540       <div class="tags">
3541
3542
3543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3544
3545
3546       </div>
3547     </div>
3548     <div class="padding"></div>
3549
3550     <div class="entry">
3551       <div class="title">
3552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
3553       </div>
3554       <div class="date">
3555         22nd December 2010
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="body">
3558         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
3559 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
3560 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
3561 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
3562 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
3563 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
3564 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
3565 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
3566 university.</p>
3567
3568 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
3569 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
3570 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
3571 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
3572 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
3573 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
3574 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
3575 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
3576
3577 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
3578 I perform on a new model.</p>
3579
3580 <ul>
3581
3582 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
3583 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
3584 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
3585
3586 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
3587 installation, X.org is working.</li>
3588
3589 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
3590 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
3591 reported by the program.</li>
3592
3593 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
3594 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
3595 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
3596 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
3597 normally test this by playing
3598 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
3599 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
3600
3601 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
3602 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3603
3604 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
3605 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
3606
3607 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
3608 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
3609
3610 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
3611 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
3612 few.</li>
3613
3614 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
3615 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
3616 notice this.</li>
3617
3618 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
3619 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
3620 resume.</li>
3621
3622 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
3623 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
3624 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
3625 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
3626 not.</li>
3627
3628 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
3629 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
3630 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
3631 existence.</li>
3632
3633 </ul>
3634
3635 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
3636 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
3637 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
3638 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
3639 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
3640 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
3641 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
3642 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
3643
3644       </div>
3645       <div class="tags">
3646
3647
3648         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3649
3650
3651       </div>
3652     </div>
3653     <div class="padding"></div>
3654
3655     <div class="entry">
3656       <div class="title">
3657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
3658       </div>
3659       <div class="date">
3660         11th December 2010
3661       </div>
3662       <div class="body">
3663         <p>As I continue to explore
3664 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
3665 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
3666 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
3667
3668 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
3669 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
3670 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
3671 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
3672 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
3673 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
3674 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
3675 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
3676 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
3677 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
3678 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
3679 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
3680 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
3681 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
3682 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
3683 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
3684 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
3685 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
3686 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3687 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3688
3689 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3690 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3691 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3692 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3693 If the Skolelinux foundation
3694 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3695 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3696 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3697 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3698 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3699 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3700 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3701 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3702
3703 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3704 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3705 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3706 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3707 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3708 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3709 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3710 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3711 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3712 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3713 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
3714 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3715 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3716 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3717 currencies.</p>
3718
3719 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3720 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3721 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3722 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
3723 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3724 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3725 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3726 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3727 BitCoins.  Check out
3728 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
3729 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
3730 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3731 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3732 yet.</p>
3733
3734 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
3735 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
3736 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3737 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
3738 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
3739
3740       </div>
3741       <div class="tags">
3742
3743
3744         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3745
3746
3747       </div>
3748     </div>
3749     <div class="padding"></div>
3750
3751     <div class="entry">
3752       <div class="title">
3753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
3754       </div>
3755       <div class="date">
3756         10th December 2010
3757       </div>
3758       <div class="body">
3759         <p>With this weeks lawless
3760 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
3761 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
3762 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
3763 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3764 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3765 A blog post from
3766 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
3767 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
3768 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
3769 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
3770 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3771 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3772 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
3773
3774 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
3775 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3776 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3777 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3778 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
3779 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3780 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3781 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
3782 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
3783 Debian</a> soon.</p>
3784
3785 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3786 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
3787 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
3788 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
3789 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
3790 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3791 you can even get
3792 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
3793 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
3794 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
3795 on the current exchange rates.</p>
3796
3797 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3798 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3799 donations to the address
3800 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
3801
3802       </div>
3803       <div class="tags">
3804
3805
3806         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
3807
3808
3809       </div>
3810     </div>
3811     <div class="padding"></div>
3812
3813     <div class="entry">
3814       <div class="title">
3815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
3816       </div>
3817       <div class="date">
3818         27th November 2010
3819       </div>
3820       <div class="body">
3821         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3822 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3823 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3824 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3825 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
3826 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3827 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3828 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
3829
3830 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3831 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3832 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
3833 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3834 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3835 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
3836 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
3837 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3838 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
3839 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3840 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
3841
3842 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3843 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3844 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
3845 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3846 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
3847 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3848 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3849 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3850 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3851 what is going on.</p>
3852
3853       </div>
3854       <div class="tags">
3855
3856
3857         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3858
3859
3860       </div>
3861     </div>
3862     <div class="padding"></div>
3863
3864     <div class="entry">
3865       <div class="title">
3866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
3867       </div>
3868       <div class="date">
3869         22nd November 2010
3870       </div>
3871       <div class="body">
3872         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
3873 upgrade testing of the
3874 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3875 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
3876 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
3877 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
3878
3879 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3880
3881 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3882
3883 <blockquote><p>
3884   apache2.2-bin
3885   aptdaemon
3886   baobab
3887   binfmt-support
3888   browser-plugin-gnash
3889   cheese-common
3890   cli-common
3891   cups-pk-helper
3892   dmz-cursor-theme
3893   empathy
3894   empathy-common
3895   freedesktop-sound-theme
3896   freeglut3
3897   gconf-defaults-service
3898   gdm-themes
3899   gedit-plugins
3900   geoclue
3901   geoclue-hostip
3902   geoclue-localnet
3903   geoclue-manual
3904   geoclue-yahoo
3905   gnash
3906   gnash-common
3907   gnome
3908   gnome-backgrounds
3909   gnome-cards-data
3910   gnome-codec-install
3911   gnome-core
3912   gnome-desktop-environment
3913   gnome-disk-utility
3914   gnome-screenshot
3915   gnome-search-tool
3916   gnome-session-canberra
3917   gnome-system-log
3918   gnome-themes-extras
3919   gnome-themes-more
3920   gnome-user-share
3921   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3922   gstreamer0.10-tools
3923   gtk2-engines
3924   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3925   gtk2-engines-smooth
3926   hamster-applet
3927   libapache2-mod-dnssd
3928   libapr1
3929   libaprutil1
3930   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
3931   libaprutil1-ldap
3932   libart2.0-cil
3933   libboost-date-time1.42.0
3934   libboost-python1.42.0
3935   libboost-thread1.42.0
3936   libchamplain-0.4-0
3937   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
3938   libcheese-gtk18
3939   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3940   libcryptui0
3941   libdiscid0
3942   libelf1
3943   libepc-1.0-2
3944   libepc-common
3945   libepc-ui-1.0-2
3946   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3947   libfreerdp0
3948   libgconf2.0-cil
3949   libgdata-common
3950   libgdata7
3951   libgdu-gtk0
3952   libgee2
3953   libgeoclue0
3954   libgexiv2-0
3955   libgif4
3956   libglade2.0-cil
3957   libglib2.0-cil
3958   libgmime2.4-cil
3959   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3960   libgnome2.24-cil
3961   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3962   libgpod-common
3963   libgpod4
3964   libgtk2.0-cil
3965   libgtkglext1
3966   libgtksourceview2.0-common
3967   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3968   libmono-addins0.2-cil
3969   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3970   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3971   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3972   libmono-posix2.0-cil
3973   libmono-security2.0-cil
3974   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3975   libmono-system2.0-cil
3976   libmtp8
3977   libmusicbrainz3-6
3978   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3979   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3980   libopal3.6.8
3981   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3982   libpt2.6.7
3983   libpython2.6
3984   librpm1
3985   librpmio1
3986   libsdl1.2debian
3987   libsrtp0
3988   libssh-4
3989   libtelepathy-farsight0
3990   libtelepathy-glib0
3991   libtidy-0.99-0
3992   media-player-info
3993   mesa-utils
3994   mono-2.0-gac
3995   mono-gac
3996   mono-runtime
3997   nautilus-sendto
3998   nautilus-sendto-empathy
3999   p7zip-full
4000   pkg-config
4001   python-aptdaemon
4002   python-aptdaemon-gtk
4003   python-axiom
4004   python-beautifulsoup
4005   python-bugbuddy
4006   python-clientform
4007   python-coherence
4008   python-configobj
4009   python-crypto
4010   python-cupshelpers
4011   python-elementtree
4012   python-epsilon
4013   python-evolution
4014   python-feedparser
4015   python-gdata
4016   python-gdbm
4017   python-gst0.10
4018   python-gtkglext1
4019   python-gtksourceview2
4020   python-httplib2
4021   python-louie
4022   python-mako
4023   python-markupsafe
4024   python-mechanize
4025   python-nevow
4026   python-notify
4027   python-opengl
4028   python-openssl
4029   python-pam
4030   python-pkg-resources
4031   python-pyasn1
4032   python-pysqlite2
4033   python-rdflib
4034   python-serial
4035   python-tagpy
4036   python-twisted-bin
4037   python-twisted-conch
4038   python-twisted-core
4039   python-twisted-web
4040   python-utidylib
4041   python-webkit
4042   python-xdg
4043   python-zope.interface
4044   remmina
4045   remmina-plugin-data
4046   remmina-plugin-rdp
4047   remmina-plugin-vnc
4048   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4049   rhythmbox-plugins
4050   rpm-common
4051   rpm2cpio
4052   seahorse-plugins
4053   shotwell
4054   software-center
4055   system-config-printer-udev
4056   telepathy-gabble
4057   telepathy-mission-control-5
4058   telepathy-salut
4059   tomboy
4060   totem
4061   totem-coherence
4062   totem-mozilla
4063   totem-plugins
4064   transmission-common
4065   xdg-user-dirs
4066   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
4067   xserver-xephyr
4068 </p></blockquote>
4069
4070 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4071
4072 <blockquote><p>
4073   cheese
4074   ekiga
4075   eog
4076   epiphany-extensions
4077   evolution-exchange
4078   fast-user-switch-applet
4079   file-roller
4080   gcalctool
4081   gconf-editor
4082   gdm
4083   gedit
4084   gedit-common
4085   gnome-games
4086   gnome-games-data
4087   gnome-nettool
4088   gnome-system-tools
4089   gnome-themes
4090   gnuchess
4091   gucharmap
4092   guile-1.8-libs
4093   libavahi-ui0
4094   libdmx1
4095   libgalago3
4096   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4097   libgtksourceview2.0-0
4098   liblircclient0
4099   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
4100   libspeexdsp1
4101   libsvga1
4102   rhythmbox
4103   seahorse
4104   sound-juicer
4105   system-config-printer
4106   totem-common
4107   transmission-gtk
4108   vinagre
4109   vino
4110 </p></blockquote>
4111
4112 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4113
4114 <blockquote><p>
4115   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4116 </p></blockquote>
4117
4118 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4119
4120 <blockquote><p>
4121 [nothing]
4122 </p></blockquote>
4123
4124 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4125
4126 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4127
4128 <blockquote><p>
4129   ksmserver
4130 </p></blockquote>
4131
4132 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4133
4134 <blockquote><p>
4135   kwin
4136   network-manager-kde
4137 </p></blockquote>
4138
4139 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4140
4141 <blockquote><p>
4142   arts
4143   dolphin
4144   freespacenotifier
4145   google-gadgets-gst
4146   google-gadgets-xul
4147   kappfinder
4148   kcalc
4149   kcharselect
4150   kde-core
4151   kde-plasma-desktop
4152   kde-standard
4153   kde-window-manager
4154   kdeartwork
4155   kdeartwork-emoticons
4156   kdeartwork-style
4157   kdeartwork-theme-icon
4158   kdebase
4159   kdebase-apps
4160   kdebase-workspace
4161   kdebase-workspace-bin
4162   kdebase-workspace-data
4163   kdeeject
4164   kdelibs
4165   kdeplasma-addons
4166   kdeutils
4167   kdewallpapers
4168   kdf
4169   kfloppy
4170   kgpg
4171   khelpcenter4
4172   kinfocenter
4173   konq-plugins-l10n
4174   konqueror-nsplugins
4175   kscreensaver
4176   kscreensaver-xsavers
4177   ktimer
4178   kwrite
4179   libgle3
4180   libkde4-ruby1.8
4181   libkonq5
4182   libkonq5-templates
4183   libnetpbm10
4184   libplasma-ruby
4185   libplasma-ruby1.8
4186   libqt4-ruby1.8
4187   marble-data
4188   marble-plugins
4189   netpbm
4190   nuvola-icon-theme
4191   plasma-dataengines-workspace
4192   plasma-desktop
4193   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
4194   plasma-runners-addons
4195   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
4196   plasma-scriptengine-python
4197   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
4198   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
4199   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
4200   plasma-scriptengines
4201   plasma-wallpapers-addons
4202   plasma-widget-folderview
4203   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4204   ruby
4205   sweeper
4206   update-notifier-kde
4207   xscreensaver-data-extra
4208   xscreensaver-gl
4209   xscreensaver-gl-extra
4210   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4211 </p></blockquote>
4212
4213 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4214
4215 <blockquote><p>
4216   ark
4217   google-gadgets-common
4218   google-gadgets-qt
4219   htdig
4220   kate
4221   kdebase-bin
4222   kdebase-data
4223   kdepasswd
4224   kfind
4225   klipper
4226   konq-plugins
4227   konqueror
4228   ksysguard
4229   ksysguardd
4230   libarchive1
4231   libcln6
4232   libeet1
4233   libeina-svn-06
4234   libggadget-1.0-0b
4235   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
4236   libgps19
4237   libkdecorations4
4238   libkephal4
4239   libkonq4
4240   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
4241   libkscreensaver5
4242   libksgrd4
4243   libksignalplotter4
4244   libkunitconversion4
4245   libkwineffects1a
4246   libmarblewidget4
4247   libntrack-qt4-1
4248   libntrack0
4249   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
4250   libplasmaclock4a
4251   libplasmagenericshell4
4252   libprocesscore4a
4253   libprocessui4a
4254   libqalculate5
4255   libqedje0a
4256   libqtruby4shared2
4257   libqzion0a
4258   libruby1.8
4259   libscim8c2a
4260   libsmokekdecore4-3
4261   libsmokekdeui4-3
4262   libsmokekfile3
4263   libsmokekhtml3
4264   libsmokekio3
4265   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
4266   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
4267   libsmokekparts3
4268   libsmokektexteditor3
4269   libsmokekutils3
4270   libsmokenepomuk3
4271   libsmokephonon3
4272   libsmokeplasma3
4273   libsmokeqtcore4-3
4274   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
4275   libsmokeqtgui4-3
4276   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
4277   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
4278   libsmokeqtscript4-3
4279   libsmokeqtsql4-3
4280   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
4281   libsmokeqttest4-3
4282   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
4283   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
4284   libsmokeqtxml4-3
4285   libsmokesolid3
4286   libsmokesoprano3
4287   libtaskmanager4a
4288   libtidy-0.99-0
4289   libweather-ion4a
4290   libxklavier16
4291   libxxf86misc1
4292   okteta
4293   oxygencursors
4294   plasma-dataengines-addons
4295   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
4296   plasma-widget-lancelot
4297   plasma-widgets-addons
4298   plasma-widgets-workspace
4299   polkit-kde-1
4300   ruby1.8
4301   systemsettings
4302   update-notifier-common
4303 </p></blockquote>
4304
4305 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
4306 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
4307 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
4308 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
4309
4310       </div>
4311       <div class="tags">
4312
4313
4314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4315
4316
4317       </div>
4318     </div>
4319     <div class="padding"></div>
4320
4321     <div class="entry">
4322       <div class="title">
4323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
4324       </div>
4325       <div class="date">
4326         22nd November 2010
4327       </div>
4328       <div class="body">
4329         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
4330 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
4331 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
4332 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
4333 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
4334 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
4335 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
4336 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
4337 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
4338
4339 <p>I found
4340 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
4341 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
4342 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
4343 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
4344 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
4345 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
4346
4347 <pre>
4348 #!/bin/sh
4349
4350 # Based on
4351 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
4352
4353 set -e
4354 set -x
4355
4356 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
4357     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
4358     exit 1
4359 else
4360     host="$1"
4361 fi
4362
4363 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
4364     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
4365     exit 1
4366 fi
4367
4368 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
4369 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
4370 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
4371 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
4372
4373 img=$host.img
4374 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
4375 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
4376
4377 parted $img mklabel msdos
4378 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
4379 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
4380 parted $img set 1 boot on
4381
4382 modprobe dm-mod
4383 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
4384 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
4385
4386 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
4387 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
4388 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
4389
4390 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
4391 losetup -d /dev/loop0
4392 </pre>
4393
4394 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
4395 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
4396
4397 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
4398 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
4399 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
4400 seem to work just fine.</p>
4401
4402       </div>
4403       <div class="tags">
4404
4405
4406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4407
4408
4409       </div>
4410     </div>
4411     <div class="padding"></div>
4412
4413     <div class="entry">
4414       <div class="title">
4415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
4416       </div>
4417       <div class="date">
4418         20th November 2010
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="body">
4421         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
4422 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
4423 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
4424 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
4425
4426 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
4427 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
4428 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
4429
4430 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
4431
4432 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4433
4434 <blockquote><p>
4435   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
4436   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
4437   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
4438   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
4439   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
4440   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
4441   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
4442   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
4443   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
4444   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
4445   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
4446   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
4447   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
4448   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
4449   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
4450   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
4451   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
4452   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
4453   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
4454   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
4455   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
4456   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
4457   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
4458   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
4459   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
4460   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
4461   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
4462   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
4463   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
4464   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
4465   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
4466   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4467   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
4468   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
4469   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
4470   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
4471   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
4472   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
4473   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
4474   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
4475   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
4476   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
4477   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
4478   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
4479   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
4480   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
4481   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
4482   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
4483   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
4484   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
4485   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
4486   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
4487   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
4488   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
4489   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
4490   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
4491   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
4492   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
4493   zip
4494 </p></blockquote>
4495
4496 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
4497
4498 <blockquote><p>
4499   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
4500   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
4501   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
4502   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
4503   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
4504   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
4505   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
4506   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
4507   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
4508   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
4509   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
4510   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4511   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4512   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4513   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
4514   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
4515   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4516   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
4517   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
4518   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
4519   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
4520   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
4521   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4522   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
4523   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
4524   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
4525   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
4526   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
4527   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
4528 </p></blockquote>
4529
4530 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4531
4532 <blockquote><p>
4533   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4534 </p></blockquote>
4535
4536 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4537
4538 <blockquote><p>
4539 [nothing]
4540 </p></blockquote>
4541
4542 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
4543
4544 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4545
4546 <blockquote><p>
4547   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
4548   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4549   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
4550   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
4551   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
4552   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
4553   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4554   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
4555   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
4556   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4557   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
4558   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
4559   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
4560   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
4561   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
4562   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
4563   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
4564   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
4565   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
4566   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
4567   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
4568   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
4569   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
4570   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
4571   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
4572   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
4573   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
4574   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
4575   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
4576   ttf-sazanami-gothic
4577 </p></blockquote>
4578
4579 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4580
4581 <blockquote><p>
4582   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
4583   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
4584   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
4585   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
4586   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
4587   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
4588   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
4589   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
4590   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
4591   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
4592   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
4593   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
4594   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
4595   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
4596   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4597   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4598   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
4599   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
4600   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4601   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
4602   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
4603   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
4604   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4605   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4606   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
4607   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
4608   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
4609   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
4610   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
4611   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
4612   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
4613   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
4614   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
4615 </p></blockquote>
4616
4617 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4618
4619 <blockquote><p>
4620   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
4621   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
4622   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
4623   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
4624   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
4625   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
4626   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
4627 </p></blockquote>
4628
4629 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4630
4631 <blockquote><p>
4632   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
4633 </p></blockquote>
4634
4635       </div>
4636       <div class="tags">
4637
4638
4639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4640
4641
4642       </div>
4643     </div>
4644     <div class="padding"></div>
4645
4646     <div class="entry">
4647       <div class="title">
4648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
4649       </div>
4650       <div class="date">
4651         20th November 2010
4652       </div>
4653       <div class="body">
4654         <p>Answering
4655 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
4656 call from the Gnash project</a> for
4657 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
4658 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
4659 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
4660 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
4661 releases out more often.</p>
4662
4663 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
4664 I have considered setting up a <a
4665 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
4666 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
4667 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
4668 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
4669 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
4670 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
4671 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
4672 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
4673 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
4674 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
4675 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
4676 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
4677
4678       </div>
4679       <div class="tags">
4680
4681
4682         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4683
4684
4685       </div>
4686     </div>
4687     <div class="padding"></div>
4688
4689     <div class="entry">
4690       <div class="title">
4691         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4692       </div>
4693       <div class="date">
4694          9th November 2010
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="body">
4697         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4698
4699 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4700 3D linked in from
4701 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4702 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4703
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="tags">
4706
4707
4708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4709
4710
4711       </div>
4712     </div>
4713     <div class="padding"></div>
4714
4715     <div class="entry">
4716       <div class="title">
4717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
4718       </div>
4719       <div class="date">
4720         24th October 2010
4721       </div>
4722       <div class="body">
4723         <p>Some updates.</p>
4724
4725 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
4726 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
4727 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4728 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4729 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4730 :)</p>
4731
4732 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4733 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4734 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4735 It is called
4736 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
4737 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
4738 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4739 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4740 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4741 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
4742
4743 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
4744 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
4745 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
4746 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4747 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
4748 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4749 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4750 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
4751 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4752 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
4753
4754       </div>
4755       <div class="tags">
4756
4757
4758         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
4759
4760
4761       </div>
4762     </div>
4763     <div class="padding"></div>
4764
4765     <div class="entry">
4766       <div class="title">
4767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
4768       </div>
4769       <div class="date">
4770          4th September 2010
4771       </div>
4772       <div class="body">
4773         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
4774 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4775 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
4776 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
4777 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
4778 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4779 installed.</p>
4780
4781 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4782 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
4783 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4784 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
4785 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4786 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
4787 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4788 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4789 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
4790
4791 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4792 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4793 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
4794 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4795 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4796 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4797 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4798 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4799 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4800 pages they want to visit.</p>
4801
4802 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4803 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4804 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4805 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4806 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4807 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4808 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4809 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4810 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
4811 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4812 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
4813
4814       </div>
4815       <div class="tags">
4816
4817
4818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4819
4820
4821       </div>
4822     </div>
4823     <div class="padding"></div>
4824
4825     <div class="entry">
4826       <div class="title">
4827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
4828       </div>
4829       <div class="date">
4830         27th July 2010
4831       </div>
4832       <div class="body">
4833         <p>I discovered this while doing
4834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
4835 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
4836 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
4837 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
4838 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
4839
4840 <p>An example is from todays
4841 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
4842 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
4843 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
4844 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
4845 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
4846 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
4847 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
4848
4849 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
4850
4851 <blockquote><pre>
4852 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
4853  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
4854   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
4855 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
4856  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
4857 </pre></blockquote>
4858
4859 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
4860 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
4861 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
4862 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
4863 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
4864 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
4865 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
4866 of dependency loops.</p>
4867
4868 <p>Thanks to
4869 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
4870 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
4871 dependencies
4872 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
4873 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
4874
4875 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
4876 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
4877 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
4878 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
4879 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
4880 it.</p>
4881
4882       </div>
4883       <div class="tags">
4884
4885
4886         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4887
4888
4889       </div>
4890     </div>
4891     <div class="padding"></div>
4892
4893     <div class="entry">
4894       <div class="title">
4895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
4896       </div>
4897       <div class="date">
4898         17th July 2010
4899       </div>
4900       <div class="body">
4901         <p>This is a
4902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
4903 on my
4904 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
4905 work</a> on
4906 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
4907 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
4908
4909 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
4910 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
4911 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
4912 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
4913
4914 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
4915 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
4916 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
4917
4918 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
4919
4920 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
4921 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
4922 the web.
4923
4924 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
4925 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
4926 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
4927 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
4928 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
4929 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
4930
4931 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
4932 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
4933 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
4934 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
4935 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
4936 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
4937 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
4938 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
4939 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
4940 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
4941 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
4942 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
4943 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
4944 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
4945 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
4946 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
4947
4948 <blockquote><pre>
4949 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4950   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4951   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4952   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4953   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4954   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4955   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4956
4957 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4958   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4959   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
4960   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
4961   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
4962   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
4963 </pre></blockquote>
4964
4965 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
4966 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
4967 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
4968 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4969 also exist.</p>
4970
4971 <blockquote><pre>
4972 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4973 objectclass: top
4974 objectclass: dnsdomain
4975 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4976 dc: tjener
4977 arecord: 10.0.2.2
4978 associateddomain: tjener.intern
4979
4980 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4981 objectclass: top
4982 objectclass: dnsdomain2
4983 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4984 dc: 2
4985 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
4986 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
4987 </pre></blockquote>
4988
4989 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
4990 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
4991 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
4992 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
4993 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
4994 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
4995 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
4996 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
4997 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
4998 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
4999 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
5000 instead.</p>
5001
5002 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
5003 like this:</p>
5004
5005 <blockquote><pre>
5006 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5007   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
5008   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
5009   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
5010   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
5011   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
5012
5013 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
5014   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
5015 </pre></blockquote>
5016
5017 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
5018 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
5019 reverse lookups.</p>
5020
5021 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
5022 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
5023 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
5024 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
5025
5026 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
5027 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
5028 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
5029
5030 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
5031 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
5032 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
5033 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
5034 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
5035
5036 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
5037 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
5038 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
5039 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
5040 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
5041
5042 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
5043 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
5044 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
5045 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
5046 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
5047 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
5048
5049 <blockquote><pre>
5050 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
5051     SUP top
5052     AUXILIARY
5053     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
5054           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
5055           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
5056           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
5057           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
5058     ))
5059 </pre></blockquote>
5060
5061 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
5062 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
5063 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
5064 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
5065 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
5066 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
5067
5068 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
5069
5070 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
5071 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
5072 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
5073 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
5074 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
5075
5076 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
5077 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
5078 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
5079 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
5080
5081 <blockquote><pre>
5082 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
5083 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
5084 </pre></blockquote>
5085
5086 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
5087 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
5088 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
5089 search result is this entry:</p>
5090
5091 <blockquote><pre>
5092 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5093 cn: dhcp
5094 objectClass: top
5095 objectClass: dhcpServer
5096 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5097 </pre></blockquote>
5098
5099 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
5100 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
5101 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
5102 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
5103 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
5104 The search result is this entry:</p>
5105
5106 <blockquote><pre>
5107 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5108 cn: DHCP Config
5109 objectClass: top
5110 objectClass: dhcpService
5111 objectClass: dhcpOptions
5112 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5113 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
5114 dhcpStatements: authoritative
5115 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
5116 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
5117 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
5118 </pre></blockquote>
5119
5120 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
5121 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
5122 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
5123 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
5124 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
5125 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
5126 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
5127 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
5128 related computer objects.</p>
5129
5130 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
5131 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
5132 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
5133 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
5134 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
5135 like:</p>
5136
5137 <blockquote><pre>
5138 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5139 cn: hostname
5140 objectClass: top
5141 objectClass: dhcpHost
5142 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5143 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
5144 </pre></blockquote>
5145
5146 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
5147 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
5148 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
5149 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
5150 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
5151 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
5152 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
5153 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
5154 structural object class.
5155
5156 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
5157
5158 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
5159 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
5160 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
5161 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
5162 in the configuration.</p>
5163
5164 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
5165 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
5166 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
5167 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
5168 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
5169 structure.</p>
5170
5171 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
5172 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
5173
5174 <blockquote><pre>
5175 ou=services
5176   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
5177     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
5178     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5179       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5180         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5181     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
5182       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
5183         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
5184     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
5185       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
5186 </pre></blockquote>
5187
5188 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
5189 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
5190 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
5191 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
5192
5193 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
5194 like this:</p>
5195
5196 <blockquote><pre>
5197 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5198 dc: hostname
5199 objectClass: top
5200 objectClass: dhcpHost
5201 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5202 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
5203 associateddomain: hostname.intern
5204 arecord: 10.11.12.13
5205 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5206 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
5207 </pre></blockquote>
5208
5209 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
5210 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
5211 auxiliary object class.</p>
5212
5213       </div>
5214       <div class="tags">
5215
5216
5217         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5218
5219
5220       </div>
5221     </div>
5222     <div class="padding"></div>
5223
5224     <div class="entry">
5225       <div class="title">
5226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
5227       </div>
5228       <div class="date">
5229         14th July 2010
5230       </div>
5231       <div class="body">
5232         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
5233 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
5234 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
5235 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
5236 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
5237
5238 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
5239 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
5240
5241 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
5242 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
5243 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
5244 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
5245 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
5246 to a slave DNS server.</p>
5247
5248 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
5249 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
5250 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
5251 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
5252 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
5253 seem to work.</p>
5254
5255 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
5256 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
5257 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
5258 this:</p>
5259
5260 <blockquote><pre>
5261   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5262   cn: hostname
5263   objectClass: dhcphost
5264   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
5265   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
5266   associateddomain: hostname.intern
5267   arecord: 10.11.12.13
5268   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
5269   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
5270   ldapconfigsound: Y
5271 </pre></blockquote>
5272
5273 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
5274 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
5275 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
5276 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
5277
5278 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
5279 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
5280 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
5281 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
5282 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
5283 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
5284 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
5285 might be a good place to put it.</p>
5286
5287 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5288 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5289
5290       </div>
5291       <div class="tags">
5292
5293
5294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5295
5296
5297       </div>
5298     </div>
5299     <div class="padding"></div>
5300
5301     <div class="entry">
5302       <div class="title">
5303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
5304       </div>
5305       <div class="date">
5306         11th July 2010
5307       </div>
5308       <div class="body">
5309         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
5310 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
5311 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
5312 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
5313
5314 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
5315 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
5316 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
5317 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
5318 LTSP clients.</p>
5319
5320 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
5321 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
5322 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
5323
5324 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
5325 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
5326 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
5327
5328 <blockquote><pre>
5329 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
5330 #
5331 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
5332 #
5333 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
5334 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
5335 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
5336 #
5337 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
5338 # existence of attribute names.
5339 #
5340 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
5341 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
5342 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
5343 #
5344 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
5345 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
5346 #
5347 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
5348 #     SUP top
5349 #     AUXILIARY
5350 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
5351
5352 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
5353 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
5354     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
5355     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
5356         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
5357         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
5358             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
5359             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
5360             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
5361             # bass value on to clients
5362             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
5363         done
5364     done
5365 fi
5366 </pre></blockquote>
5367
5368 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
5369 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
5370 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
5371 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
5372 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
5373
5374 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5375 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5376
5377 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
5378 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
5379 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
5380 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
5381 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
5382 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
5383
5384       </div>
5385       <div class="tags">
5386
5387
5388         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5389
5390
5391       </div>
5392     </div>
5393     <div class="padding"></div>
5394
5395     <div class="entry">
5396       <div class="title">
5397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5398       </div>
5399       <div class="date">
5400          9th July 2010
5401       </div>
5402       <div class="body">
5403         <p>Since
5404 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
5405 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
5406 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
5407 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
5408 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
5409 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
5410 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
5411 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
5412 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
5413 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
5414 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
5415 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
5416 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
5417
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="tags">
5420
5421
5422         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5423
5424
5425       </div>
5426     </div>
5427     <div class="padding"></div>
5428
5429     <div class="entry">
5430       <div class="title">
5431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
5432       </div>
5433       <div class="date">
5434          3rd July 2010
5435       </div>
5436       <div class="body">
5437         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
5438 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
5439 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
5440 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
5441 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
5442 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
5443 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
5444 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
5445
5446 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
5447 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
5448 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
5449 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
5450 publish the difference.</p>
5451
5452 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5453
5454 <blockquote><p>
5455   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5456   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
5457   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
5458   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5459   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
5460   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5461   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
5462   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
5463 </p></blockquote>
5464
5465 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5466
5467 <blockquote><p>
5468   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
5469   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
5470   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
5471   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
5472   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
5473   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
5474   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5475   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
5476   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5477   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5478   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
5479   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
5480   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
5481   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
5482   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
5483   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
5484   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
5485   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
5486   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
5487   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
5488 </p></blockquote>
5489
5490 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
5491
5492 <blockquote><p>
5493   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
5494   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
5495   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5496   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5497   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
5498   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
5499   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
5500   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5501   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5502   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5503   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5504   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
5505   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
5506   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
5507   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
5508   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
5509   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
5510   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
5511   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
5512   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
5513   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
5514 </p></blockquote>
5515
5516 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
5517
5518 <blockquote><p>
5519   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
5520   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
5521   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
5522 </p></blockquote>
5523
5524 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
5525 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
5526 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
5527 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
5528 the difference somewhat.
5529
5530       </div>
5531       <div class="tags">
5532
5533
5534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5535
5536
5537       </div>
5538     </div>
5539     <div class="padding"></div>
5540
5541     <div class="entry">
5542       <div class="title">
5543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
5544       </div>
5545       <div class="date">
5546         28th June 2010
5547       </div>
5548       <div class="body">
5549         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
5550 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
5551 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
5552 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
5553 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
5554 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
5555 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
5556 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
5557 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
5558 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
5559
5560 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
5561 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
5562 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
5563 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
5564 released.</p>
5565
5566 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
5567 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
5568 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
5569 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
5570
5571 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
5572 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5573
5574 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
5575 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
5576 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
5577 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
5578 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
5579
5580       </div>
5581       <div class="tags">
5582
5583
5584         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5585
5586
5587       </div>
5588     </div>
5589     <div class="padding"></div>
5590
5591     <div class="entry">
5592       <div class="title">
5593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
5594       </div>
5595       <div class="date">
5596         24th June 2010
5597       </div>
5598       <div class="body">
5599         <p>A while back, I
5600 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
5601 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
5602 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
5603 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
5604
5605 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
5606 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
5607 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
5608 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
5609
5610 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
5611 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
5612 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
5613 Debian Edu.</p>
5614
5615 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
5616 the
5617 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
5618 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
5619 available today from IETF.</p>
5620
5621 <pre>
5622 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
5623 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
5624 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
5625  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
5626         NAME 'dhcpHost'
5627         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
5628 -       SUP top
5629 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
5630         MUST cn
5631         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
5632         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
5633 </pre>
5634
5635 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
5636 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
5637 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
5638
5639 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
5640 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
5641
5642       </div>
5643       <div class="tags">
5644
5645
5646         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5647
5648
5649       </div>
5650     </div>
5651     <div class="padding"></div>
5652
5653     <div class="entry">
5654       <div class="title">
5655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="date">
5658         16th June 2010
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="body">
5661         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
5662 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
5663 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
5664 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
5665 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
5666 this:
5667
5668 <blockquote><pre>
5669 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5670 tasksel --new-install
5671 </pre></blockquote>
5672
5673 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
5674 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
5675 any output what so ever.
5676
5677 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
5678 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
5679 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
5680 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
5681 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
5682 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
5683 code like this:
5684
5685 <blockquote><pre>
5686 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5687 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
5688 $cmd
5689 </pre></blockquote>
5690
5691 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
5692 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
5693 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
5694 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
5695 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
5696 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
5697 installation.</p>
5698
5699 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
5700 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
5701 like this.</p>
5702
5703       </div>
5704       <div class="tags">
5705
5706
5707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5708
5709
5710       </div>
5711     </div>
5712     <div class="padding"></div>
5713
5714     <div class="entry">
5715       <div class="title">
5716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
5717       </div>
5718       <div class="date">
5719         13th June 2010
5720       </div>
5721       <div class="body">
5722         <p>My
5723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
5724 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
5725 finally made the upgrade logs available from
5726 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
5727 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
5728 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
5729 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
5730
5731 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
5732 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
5733 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
5734 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
5735 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
5736 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
5737 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
5738 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
5739
5740 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
5741 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
5742 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
5743 too surprising.</p>
5744
5745 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
5746 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
5747 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
5748 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
5749 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
5750 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
5751 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
5752 continue.</p>
5753
5754 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
5755 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
5756   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
5757   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
5758   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
5759   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
5760   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
5761   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5762   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5763   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5764   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5765   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5766   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5767   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5768   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5769   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5770   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5771   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5772   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5773   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5774   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5775   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5776   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5777   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5778   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5779   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5780   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5781   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5782   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
5783   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
5784
5785 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
5786
5787 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
5788   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
5789   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
5790   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
5791   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5792   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
5793   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
5794   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
5795   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
5796   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
5797   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5798   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
5799   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5800   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
5801   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
5802   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
5803   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
5804   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
5805   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
5806   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
5807   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
5808   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
5809   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
5810   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
5811   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5812   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
5813   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
5814   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
5815   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
5816   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5817   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5818   zip</p>
5819
5820 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
5821
5822 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
5823   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
5824   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
5825   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
5826   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
5827   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
5828   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5829   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5830   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5831   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5832   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5833   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5834   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5835   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5836   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5837   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5838   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5839   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5840   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5841   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5842   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5843   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5844   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5845   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5846   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5847   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5848   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5849   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
5850
5851 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
5852 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
5853   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5854   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
5855   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
5856   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5857   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
5858   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
5859   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5860   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
5861   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
5862   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
5863   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
5864   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
5865   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
5866   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
5867   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
5868   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5869   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5870   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5871   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
5872   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5873   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
5874   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
5875   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5876   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5877   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
5878   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
5879   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
5880   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
5881   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
5882   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
5883   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
5884   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
5885   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
5886   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5887   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5888   xulrunner-1.9</p>
5889
5890
5891       </div>
5892       <div class="tags">
5893
5894
5895         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5896
5897
5898       </div>
5899     </div>
5900     <div class="padding"></div>
5901
5902     <div class="entry">
5903       <div class="title">
5904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
5905       </div>
5906       <div class="date">
5907         11th June 2010
5908       </div>
5909       <div class="body">
5910         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
5911 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
5912 have been discovered and reported in the process
5913 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
5914 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
5915 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
5916 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
5917 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
5918
5919 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
5920 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
5921 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
5922 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
5923 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
5924 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
5925
5926 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
5927 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
5928 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5929 is created.  The bug report
5930 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
5931 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
5932 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
5933 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
5934 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
5935 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
5936 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
5937 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
5938 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
5939 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
5940 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
5941 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
5942 Debian Squeeze.</p>
5943
5944 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
5945 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
5946 trick:</p>
5947
5948 <blockquote><pre>
5949 #!/bin/sh
5950 set -ex
5951
5952 if [ "$1" ] ; then
5953     desktop=$1
5954 else
5955     desktop=gnome
5956 fi
5957
5958 from=lenny
5959 to=squeeze
5960
5961 exec &lt; /dev/null
5962 unset LANG
5963 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
5964 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
5965 fuser -mv .
5966 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
5967 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5968 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
5969 #!/bin/sh
5970 exit 101
5971 EOF
5972 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
5973 exit_cleanup() {
5974     umount $tmpdir/proc
5975 }
5976 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
5977 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
5978 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
5979
5980 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
5981
5982 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
5983 # to return the correct answers.
5984 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
5985     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
5986
5987 # Include the desktop and laptop task
5988 for test in desktop laptop ; do
5989     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
5990 #!/bin/sh
5991 exit 2
5992 EOF
5993     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
5994 done
5995
5996 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5997 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
5998 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
5999 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
6000
6001 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
6002 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
6003 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
6004 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
6005 fuser -mv
6006 </pre></blockquote>
6007
6008 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
6009 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
6010 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
6011 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
6012 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
6013 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
6014
6015 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
6016 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
6017 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
6018 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
6019 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
6020 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
6021 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
6022
6023 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
6024 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
6025 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
6026 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
6027 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
6028 packages.</p>
6029
6030       </div>
6031       <div class="tags">
6032
6033
6034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6035
6036
6037       </div>
6038     </div>
6039     <div class="padding"></div>
6040
6041     <div class="entry">
6042       <div class="title">
6043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
6044       </div>
6045       <div class="date">
6046          6th June 2010
6047       </div>
6048       <div class="body">
6049         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
6050 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
6051 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
6052 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
6053 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
6054 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
6055 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
6056
6057 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
6058 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
6059 COLUMNS):</p>
6060
6061 <blockquote><pre>
6062 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
6063 previous=N
6064 PREVLEVEL=
6065 RUNLEVEL=
6066 runlevel=S
6067 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
6068 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
6069 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
6070 </pre></blockquote>
6071
6072 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
6073 script.</p>
6074
6075 <blockquote><pre>
6076 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
6077 previous=N
6078 PREVLEVEL=N
6079 RUNLEVEL=S
6080 runlevel=S
6081 </pre></blockquote>
6082
6083 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
6084 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
6085 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
6086
6087 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
6088 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
6089 choice.</p>
6090
6091       </div>
6092       <div class="tags">
6093
6094
6095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6096
6097
6098       </div>
6099     </div>
6100     <div class="padding"></div>
6101
6102     <div class="entry">
6103       <div class="title">
6104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
6105       </div>
6106       <div class="date">
6107          6th June 2010
6108       </div>
6109       <div class="body">
6110         <p>Via the
6111 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
6112 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
6113 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
6114 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
6115 following the standards wars of today.</p>
6116
6117       </div>
6118       <div class="tags">
6119
6120
6121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6122
6123
6124       </div>
6125     </div>
6126     <div class="padding"></div>
6127
6128     <div class="entry">
6129       <div class="title">
6130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
6131       </div>
6132       <div class="date">
6133          3rd June 2010
6134       </div>
6135       <div class="body">
6136         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
6137 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
6138 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
6139 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
6140 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
6141
6142 <blockquote><pre>
6143 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
6144   vendor                    count
6145   Dell Computer Corporation     1
6146     PowerEdge 1750              1
6147   IBM                           1
6148     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
6149   Intel                         2
6150   [no-dmi-info]                 3
6151 maintainer:~#
6152 </pre></blockquote>
6153
6154 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
6155 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
6156 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
6157 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
6158 option to list the individual machines.</p>
6159
6160 <p>A larger list is
6161 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
6162 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
6163 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
6164 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
6165 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
6166 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
6167 collector.</p>
6168
6169       </div>
6170       <div class="tags">
6171
6172
6173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
6174
6175
6176       </div>
6177     </div>
6178     <div class="padding"></div>
6179
6180     <div class="entry">
6181       <div class="title">
6182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
6183       </div>
6184       <div class="date">
6185          1st June 2010
6186       </div>
6187       <div class="body">
6188         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
6189 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
6190 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
6191 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
6192 wait.</p>
6193
6194 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
6195 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
6196 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
6197 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
6198 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
6199 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
6200
6201 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
6202 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
6203 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
6204 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
6205 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
6206 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
6207 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
6208 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
6209
6210 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
6211
6212       </div>
6213       <div class="tags">
6214
6215
6216         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6217
6218
6219       </div>
6220     </div>
6221     <div class="padding"></div>
6222
6223     <div class="entry">
6224       <div class="title">
6225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
6226       </div>
6227       <div class="date">
6228         27th May 2010
6229       </div>
6230       <div class="body">
6231         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
6232 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
6233 issues are known and should be solved:
6234
6235 <p><ul>
6236
6237 <li>The wicd package seen to
6238 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
6239 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
6240 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
6241 seem to be on the case.</li>
6242
6243 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
6244 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
6245 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
6246 maintainer is on the case.</li>
6247
6248 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
6249 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
6250 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
6251 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
6252 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
6253 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
6254 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
6255 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
6256
6257 </ul></p>
6258
6259 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
6260 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
6261 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
6262 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
6263
6264 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6265 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6266 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6267 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6268
6269 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
6270
6271       </div>
6272       <div class="tags">
6273
6274
6275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6276
6277
6278       </div>
6279     </div>
6280     <div class="padding"></div>
6281
6282     <div class="entry">
6283       <div class="title">
6284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
6285       </div>
6286       <div class="date">
6287         22nd May 2010
6288       </div>
6289       <div class="body">
6290         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
6291 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
6292 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
6293 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
6294
6295 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
6296 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
6297 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
6298 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
6299 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
6300 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
6301 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
6302 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
6303 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
6304 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
6305 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
6306 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
6307 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
6308 going to work.</p>
6309
6310 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
6311 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
6312 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
6313 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
6314 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
6315 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
6316 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
6317 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
6318 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
6319 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
6320 Edu.</p>
6321
6322 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
6323 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
6324 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
6325 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
6326 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
6327 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
6328
6329 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
6330 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
6331
6332       </div>
6333       <div class="tags">
6334
6335
6336         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6337
6338
6339       </div>
6340     </div>
6341     <div class="padding"></div>
6342
6343     <div class="entry">
6344       <div class="title">
6345         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
6346       </div>
6347       <div class="date">
6348         14th May 2010
6349       </div>
6350       <div class="body">
6351         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
6352 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
6353 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
6354 expected, if I am to believe the
6355 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
6356 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
6357 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
6358 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
6359 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
6360 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
6361 version.</p>
6362
6363 More information about
6364 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6365 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
6366 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
6367 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
6368
6369 <blockquote><pre>
6370 CONCURRENCY=none
6371 </pre></blockquote>
6372
6373 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6374 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6375 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6376 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6377
6378       </div>
6379       <div class="tags">
6380
6381
6382         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6383
6384
6385       </div>
6386     </div>
6387     <div class="padding"></div>
6388
6389     <div class="entry">
6390       <div class="title">
6391         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
6392       </div>
6393       <div class="date">
6394         14th May 2010
6395       </div>
6396       <div class="body">
6397         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
6398 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
6399 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
6400 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
6401 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
6402 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
6403 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
6404 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
6405
6406 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
6407 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
6408 this on the collector host:</p>
6409
6410 <blockquote><pre>
6411 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
6412 </pre></blockquote>
6413
6414 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
6415 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
6416
6417 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
6418 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
6419 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
6420 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
6421 written yet.</p>
6422
6423       </div>
6424       <div class="tags">
6425
6426
6427         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
6428
6429
6430       </div>
6431     </div>
6432     <div class="padding"></div>
6433
6434     <div class="entry">
6435       <div class="title">
6436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
6437       </div>
6438       <div class="date">
6439         13th May 2010
6440       </div>
6441       <div class="body">
6442         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
6443 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
6444 has been
6445 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
6446
6447 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
6448 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
6449 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
6450 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
6451 based boot system.  Tollef is
6452 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
6453 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
6454 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
6455 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
6456 at the moment do not.</p>
6457
6458 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
6459 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
6460 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
6461 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
6462 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
6463 way forward.</p>
6464
6465 <p>In the mean time, based on the
6466 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
6467 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
6468 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
6469 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
6470 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
6471 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
6472 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
6473 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
6474
6475       </div>
6476       <div class="tags">
6477
6478
6479         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6480
6481
6482       </div>
6483     </div>
6484     <div class="padding"></div>
6485
6486     <div class="entry">
6487       <div class="title">
6488         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
6489       </div>
6490       <div class="date">
6491          6th May 2010
6492       </div>
6493       <div class="body">
6494         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
6495 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
6496 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
6497 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
6498 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6499 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
6500 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
6501
6502 <blockquote><pre>
6503 CONCURRENCY=makefile
6504 </pre></blockquote>
6505
6506 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
6507 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
6508 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
6509 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
6510 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
6511 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
6512 make this happen.</p>
6513
6514 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
6515 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
6516 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
6517 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
6518 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
6519
6520 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
6521 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
6522 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
6523 fix the remaining issues.</p>
6524
6525 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
6526 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
6527 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
6528 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
6529
6530       </div>
6531       <div class="tags">
6532
6533
6534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6535
6536
6537       </div>
6538     </div>
6539     <div class="padding"></div>
6540
6541     <div class="entry">
6542       <div class="title">
6543         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
6544       </div>
6545       <div class="date">
6546         27th July 2009
6547       </div>
6548       <div class="body">
6549         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
6550 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
6551 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
6552 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
6553 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
6554 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
6555 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
6556
6557 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
6558 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
6559 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
6560
6561       </div>
6562       <div class="tags">
6563
6564
6565         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6566
6567
6568       </div>
6569     </div>
6570     <div class="padding"></div>
6571
6572     <div class="entry">
6573       <div class="title">
6574         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
6575       </div>
6576       <div class="date">
6577         22nd July 2009
6578       </div>
6579       <div class="body">
6580         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
6581 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
6582 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
6583 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
6584 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
6585 the package up to date.</p>
6586
6587 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
6588 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
6589 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
6590 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
6591 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
6592 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
6593 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
6594 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
6595 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
6596 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
6597 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
6598 working on the future release.</p>
6599
6600 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
6601 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
6602
6603       </div>
6604       <div class="tags">
6605
6606
6607         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6608
6609
6610       </div>
6611     </div>
6612     <div class="padding"></div>
6613
6614     <div class="entry">
6615       <div class="title">
6616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
6617       </div>
6618       <div class="date">
6619         24th June 2009
6620       </div>
6621       <div class="body">
6622         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
6623 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
6624 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
6625 funded
6626 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
6627 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
6628 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
6629 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
6630 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
6631 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
6632
6633 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
6634 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
6635 boot:</p>
6636
6637 <ul>
6638
6639 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
6640
6641 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
6642    clock is in UTC.</li>
6643
6644 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
6645    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
6646    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
6647
6648 </ul>
6649
6650 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
6651 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
6652 Villegas</a>.
6653
6654 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
6655 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
6656 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
6657 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
6658 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
6659 using this.</p>
6660
6661 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
6662 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
6663 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
6664 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
6665 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
6666 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
6667 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
6668
6669       </div>
6670       <div class="tags">
6671
6672
6673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6674
6675
6676       </div>
6677     </div>
6678     <div class="padding"></div>
6679
6680     <div class="entry">
6681       <div class="title">
6682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="date">
6685         17th May 2009
6686       </div>
6687       <div class="body">
6688         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
6689 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
6690 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
6691 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
6692 dager siden kom
6693 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
6694 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
6695 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
6696 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
6697 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
6698
6699 <blockquote>
6700 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
6701 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
6702 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
6703 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
6704 </blockquote>
6705
6706 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
6707 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
6708 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
6709 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
6710 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
6711
6712 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
6713 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
6714 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
6715
6716       </div>
6717       <div class="tags">
6718
6719
6720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
6721
6722
6723       </div>
6724     </div>
6725     <div class="padding"></div>
6726
6727     <div class="entry">
6728       <div class="title">
6729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
6730       </div>
6731       <div class="date">
6732          7th May 2009
6733       </div>
6734       <div class="body">
6735         <p>Kom over
6736 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
6737 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
6738 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
6739 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
6740 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
6741 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
6742 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
6743
6744       </div>
6745       <div class="tags">
6746
6747
6748         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6749
6750
6751       </div>
6752     </div>
6753     <div class="padding"></div>
6754
6755     <div class="entry">
6756       <div class="title">
6757         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
6758       </div>
6759       <div class="date">
6760          2nd May 2009
6761       </div>
6762       <div class="body">
6763         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
6764 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
6765 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
6766 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
6767 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
6768 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
6769 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
6770 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
6771 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
6772 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
6773 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
6774 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
6775 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
6776 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
6777 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
6778 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
6779 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
6780 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
6781 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
6782 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
6783
6784 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
6785 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
6786 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
6787 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
6788 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
6789 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
6790 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
6791 betydelige.</p>
6792
6793       </div>
6794       <div class="tags">
6795
6796
6797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6798
6799
6800       </div>
6801     </div>
6802     <div class="padding"></div>
6803
6804     <div class="entry">
6805       <div class="title">
6806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
6807       </div>
6808       <div class="date">
6809          2nd May 2009
6810       </div>
6811       <div class="body">
6812         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
6813 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
6814 do not yet know them.</p>
6815
6816 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
6817 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
6818 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
6819 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
6820 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
6821 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
6822 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
6823 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
6824 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
6825 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
6826 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
6827
6828 <p>The second one is
6829 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
6830 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
6831 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
6832 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
6833 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
6834 and the company behind it is running
6835 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
6836 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
6837 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
6838 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
6839 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
6840 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
6841 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
6842 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
6843
6844 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
6845 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
6846 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
6847 surrounded by today.</p>
6848
6849       </div>
6850       <div class="tags">
6851
6852
6853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6854
6855
6856       </div>
6857     </div>
6858     <div class="padding"></div>
6859
6860     <div class="entry">
6861       <div class="title">
6862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
6863       </div>
6864       <div class="date">
6865         28th April 2009
6866       </div>
6867       <div class="body">
6868         <p>Julien Blache
6869 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
6870 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
6871 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
6872 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
6873 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
6874 properties.</p>
6875
6876       </div>
6877       <div class="tags">
6878
6879
6880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6881
6882
6883       </div>
6884     </div>
6885     <div class="padding"></div>
6886
6887     <div class="entry">
6888       <div class="title">
6889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
6890       </div>
6891       <div class="date">
6892         30th March 2009
6893       </div>
6894       <div class="body">
6895         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
6896 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
6897 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
6898 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
6899 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
6900 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
6901 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
6902 application.</p>
6903
6904 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
6905 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
6906 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
6907 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
6908 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
6909 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
6910 blocked from doing so.</p>
6911
6912 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
6913 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
6914 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
6915 requirements change.</p>
6916
6917 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
6918 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
6919 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
6920
6921       </div>
6922       <div class="tags">
6923
6924
6925         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6926
6927
6928       </div>
6929     </div>
6930     <div class="padding"></div>
6931
6932     <div class="entry">
6933       <div class="title">
6934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
6935       </div>
6936       <div class="date">
6937         29th March 2009
6938       </div>
6939       <div class="body">
6940         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
6941 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
6942 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
6943 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
6944 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
6945 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
6946 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
6947 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
6948 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
6949 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
6950 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
6951 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
6952 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
6953 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
6954 now. :)</p>
6955
6956       </div>
6957       <div class="tags">
6958
6959
6960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6961
6962
6963       </div>
6964     </div>
6965     <div class="padding"></div>
6966
6967     <div class="entry">
6968       <div class="title">
6969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
6970       </div>
6971       <div class="date">
6972         29th March 2009
6973       </div>
6974       <div class="body">
6975         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
6976 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
6977 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
6978 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
6979 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
6980 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
6981
6982 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
6983 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
6984 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
6985 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
6986 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
6987 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
6988 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
6989 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
6990 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
6991 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
6992 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
6993 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
6994 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
6995
6996 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
6997 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
6998 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
6999 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
7000
7001 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
7002 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
7003
7004 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
7005 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
7006 new IETF work group?</p>
7007
7008       </div>
7009       <div class="tags">
7010
7011
7012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7013
7014
7015       </div>
7016     </div>
7017     <div class="padding"></div>
7018
7019     <div class="entry">
7020       <div class="title">
7021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
7022       </div>
7023       <div class="date">
7024         15th February 2009
7025       </div>
7026       <div class="body">
7027         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
7028 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
7029 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
7030 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
7031 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
7032 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
7033 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
7034 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
7035 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
7036 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
7037 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
7038 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
7039
7040       </div>
7041       <div class="tags">
7042
7043
7044         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
7045
7046
7047       </div>
7048     </div>
7049     <div class="padding"></div>
7050
7051     <div class="entry">
7052       <div class="title">
7053         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
7054       </div>
7055       <div class="date">
7056          7th December 2008
7057       </div>
7058       <div class="body">
7059         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
7060 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
7061 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
7062 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
7063 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
7064 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
7065 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
7066 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
7067
7068 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
7069 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
7070 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
7071 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
7072 of these cards.</p>
7073
7074       </div>
7075       <div class="tags">
7076
7077
7078         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
7079
7080
7081       </div>
7082     </div>
7083     <div class="padding"></div>
7084
7085     <div class="entry">
7086       <div class="title">
7087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
7088       </div>
7089       <div class="date">
7090         25th November 2008
7091       </div>
7092       <div class="body">
7093         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
7094 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
7095 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
7096 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
7097 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
7098 notes are available on
7099 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
7100 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
7101 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
7102 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
7103 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
7104 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
7105 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
7106 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
7107 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
7108
7109 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
7110 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
7111
7112       </div>
7113       <div class="tags">
7114
7115
7116         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7117
7118
7119       </div>
7120     </div>
7121     <div class="padding"></div>
7122
7123     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
7124     <div id="sidebar">
7125
7126
7127
7128 <h2>Archive</h2>
7129 <ul>
7130
7131 <li>2013
7132 <ul>
7133
7134 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
7135
7136 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
7137
7138 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
7139
7140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
7141
7142 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7143
7144 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
7145
7146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
7147
7148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
7149
7150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
7151
7152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
7153
7154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (2)</a></li>
7155
7156 </ul></li>
7157
7158 <li>2012
7159 <ul>
7160
7161 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
7162
7163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
7164
7165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
7166
7167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
7168
7169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
7170
7171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
7172
7173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
7174
7175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
7176
7177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
7178
7179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
7180
7181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
7182
7183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
7184
7185 </ul></li>
7186
7187 <li>2011
7188 <ul>
7189
7190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
7191
7192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
7193
7194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
7195
7196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
7197
7198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
7199
7200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
7201
7202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
7203
7204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
7205
7206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
7207
7208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
7209
7210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
7211
7212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
7213
7214 </ul></li>
7215
7216 <li>2010
7217 <ul>
7218
7219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
7220
7221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
7222
7223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
7224
7225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
7226
7227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7228
7229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
7230
7231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
7232
7233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
7234
7235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
7236
7237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
7238
7239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
7240
7241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
7242
7243 </ul></li>
7244
7245 <li>2009
7246 <ul>
7247
7248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
7249
7250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
7251
7252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
7253
7254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
7255
7256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
7257
7258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
7259
7260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
7261
7262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
7263
7264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
7265
7266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
7267
7268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
7269
7270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
7271
7272 </ul></li>
7273
7274 <li>2008
7275 <ul>
7276
7277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
7278
7279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
7280
7281 </ul></li>
7282
7283 </ul>
7284
7285
7286
7287 <h2>Tags</h2>
7288 <ul>
7289
7290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
7291
7292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
7293
7294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
7295
7296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
7297
7298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
7299
7300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (13)</a></li>
7301
7302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
7303
7304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (90)</a></li>
7305
7306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
7307
7308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
7309
7310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
7311
7312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
7313
7314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (225)</a></li>
7315
7316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
7317
7318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
7319
7320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
7321
7322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
7323
7324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
7325
7326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
7327
7328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
7329
7330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
7331
7332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
7333
7334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
7335
7336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
7337
7338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (3)</a></li>
7339
7340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
7341
7342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (236)</a></li>
7343
7344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (156)</a></li>
7345
7346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
7347
7348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
7349
7350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
7351
7352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
7353
7354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
7355
7356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
7357
7358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
7359
7360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (8)</a></li>
7361
7362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
7363
7364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
7365
7366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
7367
7368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (32)</a></li>
7369
7370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
7371
7372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
7373
7374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
7375
7376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
7377
7378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
7379
7380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (20)</a></li>
7381
7382  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
7383
7384  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
7385
7386  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
7387
7388  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
7389
7390  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
7391
7392 </ul>
7393
7394
7395     </div>
7396     <p style="text-align: right">
7397  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
7398 </p>
7399
7400   </body>
7401 </html>