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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          1st November 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
  32 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
  33 Enterprise Visualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
  34 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
  35 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
  36 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
  37 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
  38 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
  39 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
  40 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
  41 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
  42 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
  43
  44 <p>The source is now available from
  45 <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>
  46
  47       </div>
  48       <div class="tags">
  49
  50
  51         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>.
  52
  53
  54       </div>
  55     </div>
  56     <div class="padding"></div>
  57
  58     <div class="entry">
  59       <div class="title">
  60         <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>
  61       </div>
  62       <div class="date">
  63         27th October 2013
  64       </div>
  65       <div class="body">
  66         <p>The
  67 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
  68 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
  69 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
  70 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
  71 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
  72 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
  73 of a plan to simplify the build system for
  74 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
  75 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
  76 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
  77 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
  78 Raspberry Pi.</p>
  79
  80 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
  81 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
  82 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
  83 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
  84 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
  85 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
  86 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
  87 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
  88 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
  89 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
  90 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
  91 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
  92 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
  93 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
  94 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
  95 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
  96 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
  97 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
  98 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
  99 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
 100 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
 101 available from
 102 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
 103 upstream project page</a>.</p>
 104
 105 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
 106 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
 107 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
 108 list:</p>
 109
 110 <p><pre>
 111 #!/bin/sh
 112 set -e # Exit on first error
 113 rootdir="$1"
 114 cd "$rootdir"
 115 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
 116 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 117 EOF
 118 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
 119 # install a kernel somewhere too.
 120 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
 121     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 122 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
 123 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
 124 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
 125 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
 126 </pre></p>
 127
 128 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
 129 to build the image:</p>
 130
 131 <pre>
 132 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
 133     --variant minbase \
 134     --arch armel \
 135     --distribution jessie \
 136     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 137     --image test.img \
 138     --size 600M \
 139     --bootsize 64M \
 140     --boottype vfat \
 141     --log-level debug \
 142     --verbose \
 143     --no-kernel \
 144     --no-extlinux \
 145     --root-password raspberry \
 146     --hostname raspberrypi \
 147     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 148     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 149     --package netbase \
 150     --package git-core \
 151     --package binutils \
 152     --package ca-certificates \
 153     --package wget \
 154     --package kmod
 155 </pre></p>
 156
 157 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 158 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 159 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 160 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 161 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 162 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 163 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 164
 165 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 166 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 167 build dependency list.</p>
 168
 169 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 170 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 171 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 172 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 173
 174       </div>
 175       <div class="tags">
 176
 177
 178         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>.
 179
 180
 181       </div>
 182     </div>
 183     <div class="padding"></div>
 184
 185     <div class="entry">
 186       <div class="title">
 187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
 188       </div>
 189       <div class="date">
 190         21st October 2013
 191       </div>
 192       <div class="body">
 193         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
 194 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
 195 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
 196 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
 197 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
 198 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
 199 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
 200 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
 201
 202 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
 203 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
 204 instead, I started playing with a
 205 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
 206 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
 207 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
 208 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
 209 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
 210 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
 211 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
 212 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
 213 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
 214 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
 215 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
 216 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
 217 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
 218 every client on the local network.</p>
 219
 220 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
 221 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
 222 and a script
 223 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
 224 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
 225 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
 226 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
 227 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
 228 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
 229 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
 230 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
 231 support.</p>
 232
 233 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
 234 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
 235
 236 <p><pre>
 237 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
 238     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
 239 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
 240 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
 241 %
 242 </pre></p>
 243
 244 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
 245 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
 246 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
 247 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
 248 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
 249 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
 250
 251 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
 252 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
 253 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
 254
 255 <p><table>
 256
 257 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
 258 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
 259 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
 260 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
 261 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
 262 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
 263
 264 </table></p>
 265
 266 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
 267 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
 268 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
 269 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
 270 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
 271 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
 272 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
 273
 274       </div>
 275       <div class="tags">
 276
 277
 278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 279
 280
 281       </div>
 282     </div>
 283     <div class="padding"></div>
 284
 285     <div class="entry">
 286       <div class="title">
 287         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
 288       </div>
 289       <div class="date">
 290         19th October 2013
 291       </div>
 292       <div class="body">
 293         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
 294 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
 295 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
 296 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
 297 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
 298 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
 299 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
 300 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
 301
 302       </div>
 303       <div class="tags">
 304
 305
 306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 307
 308
 309       </div>
 310     </div>
 311     <div class="padding"></div>
 312
 313     <div class="entry">
 314       <div class="title">
 315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
 316       </div>
 317       <div class="date">
 318         15th October 2013
 319       </div>
 320       <div class="body">
 321         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
 322 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
 323 these. :)</p>
 324
 325 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
 326 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
 327 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
 328 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
 329 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
 330 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
 331 hope you will to. :)</p>
 332
 333 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
 334 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
 335 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
 336 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
 337 donated.  Are you next?</p>
 338
 339 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
 340 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
 341 statement under the heading
 342 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
 343 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
 344 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
 345 too.</p>
 346
 347       </div>
 348       <div class="tags">
 349
 350
 351         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>.
 352
 353
 354       </div>
 355     </div>
 356     <div class="padding"></div>
 357
 358     <div class="entry">
 359       <div class="title">
 360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
 361       </div>
 362       <div class="date">
 363         11th October 2013
 364       </div>
 365       <div class="body">
 366         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
 367 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
 368 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
 369 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
 370 successful examples like
 371 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
 372 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
 373 (see
 374 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
 375 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
 376 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
 377 can be seen from their
 378 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
 379 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
 380 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
 381 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
 382 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
 383
 384 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
 385 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
 386 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
 387 my recent involvement in
 388 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
 389 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
 390 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
 391 when possible, given that most communication between people are
 392 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
 393 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
 394 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
 395 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
 396 important over the years.</p>
 397
 398 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
 399 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
 400 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
 401 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
 402 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
 403 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
 404 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
 405 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
 406 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
 407 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
 408 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
 409 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
 410 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
 411 speakers about this talk (from
 412 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
 413
 414 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 415
 416 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
 417 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
 418 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
 419 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
 420 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
 421 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
 422 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
 423 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
 424 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
 425 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
 426 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
 427 that project (from
 428 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
 429
 430 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 431
 432 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
 433 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
 434 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
 435 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
 436 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
 437 based community mesh networks.</p>
 438
 439 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
 440 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
 441 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
 442 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
 443 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
 444 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
 445 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
 446 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
 447 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
 448
 449 <p><table>
 450 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
 451 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
 452 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
 453 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
 454 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
 455 </table></p>
 456
 457 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
 458 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
 459 VillageTelco about
 460 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
 461 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
 462 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
 463 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
 464 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
 465 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
 466
 467 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
 468 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
 469 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
 470 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
 471
 472 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
 473 us on IRC, either channel
 474 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
 475 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
 476 irc.freenode.net.</p>
 477
 478 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
 479 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
 480 and Innovation called
 481 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
 482 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
 483 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
 484 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
 485 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
 486 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
 487 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
 488 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
 489
 490 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
 491 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
 492 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
 493 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
 494 mesh system.</p>
 495
 496       </div>
 497       <div class="tags">
 498
 499
 500         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
 501
 502
 503       </div>
 504     </div>
 505     <div class="padding"></div>
 506
 507     <div class="entry">
 508       <div class="title">
 509         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
 510       </div>
 511       <div class="date">
 512          8th October 2013
 513       </div>
 514       <div class="body">
 515         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
 516 Salvador had published a
 517 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
 518 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
 519 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
 520 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
 521 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
 522 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
 523 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
 524 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
 525 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
 526 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
 527 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
 528 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
 529 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
 530 computers without hard drives by installing one central
 531 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
 532
 533 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
 534
 535 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 536
 537 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
 538 me know. :)</p>
 539
 540       </div>
 541       <div class="tags">
 542
 543
 544         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 545
 546
 547       </div>
 548     </div>
 549     <div class="padding"></div>
 550
 551     <div class="entry">
 552       <div class="title">
 553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
 554       </div>
 555       <div class="date">
 556         29th September 2013
 557       </div>
 558       <div class="body">
 559         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
 560 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
 561 complete announcement text can be found at
 562 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
 563 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
 564
 565 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
 566 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
 567 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
 568 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
 569
 570       </div>
 571       <div class="tags">
 572
 573
 574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 575
 576
 577       </div>
 578     </div>
 579     <div class="padding"></div>
 580
 581     <div class="entry">
 582       <div class="title">
 583         <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>
 584       </div>
 585       <div class="date">
 586         27th September 2013
 587       </div>
 588       <div class="body">
 589         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
 590 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
 591 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
 592 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
 593
 594 <ul>
 595
 596 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
 597 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
 598
 599 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
 600 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 601
 602 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
 603 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
 604 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
 605 (Youtube)</li>
 606
 607 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
 608 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
 609
 610 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
 611 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 612
 613 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
 614 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 615 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
 616
 617 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
 618 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
 619 (Youtube)</li>
 620
 621 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
 622 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
 623
 624 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
 625 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
 626
 627 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
 628 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 629 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
 630
 631 </ul>
 632
 633 <p>A larger list is available from
 634 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
 635 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
 636
 637 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 638 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 639 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 640 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 641 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 642 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 643 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 644 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
 645 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
 646 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 647 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 648
 649       </div>
 650       <div class="tags">
 651
 652
 653         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>.
 654
 655
 656       </div>
 657     </div>
 658     <div class="padding"></div>
 659
 660     <div class="entry">
 661       <div class="title">
 662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
 663       </div>
 664       <div class="date">
 665         16th September 2013
 666       </div>
 667       <div class="body">
 668         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 669 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
 670
 671 <blockquote>
 672 <p>Hi,</p>
 673
 674 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
 675 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 676 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
 677
 678 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
 679 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
 680 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
 681 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
 682
 683 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
 684 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
 685
 686 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
 687 compared to beta1:</p>
 688
 689 <ul>
 690
 691 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
 692 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
 693 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
 694 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
 695 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
 696 main server.</li>
 697 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
 698 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
 699 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
 700 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
 701 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
 702
 703 </ul>
 704
 705 <p>Where to get it:</p>
 706
 707 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
 708
 709 <ul>
 710 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
 711 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
 712 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
 713 </ul>
 714
 715 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
 716
 717 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
 718 <ul>
 719 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
 720 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
 721 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
 722 </ul>
 723
 724 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
 725
 726 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
 727 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
 728 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
 729 as the other isos.</p>
 730
 731 <p>How to report bugs</p>
 732
 733 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
 734 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
 735
 736
 737 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
 738
 739 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
 740 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 741 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 742 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 743 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 744 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 745 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 746 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 747 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 748 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 749 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 750 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 751 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
 752
 753 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
 754 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
 755 Squeeze release.</p>
 756
 757 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
 758
 759 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 760 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 761 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 762 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 763 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
 764 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
 765 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
 766 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
 767 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
 768 directory.</p>
 769
 770
 771 <p>cheers,
 772 <br>        Holger</p>
 773 </blockquote>
 774
 775       </div>
 776       <div class="tags">
 777
 778
 779         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 780
 781
 782       </div>
 783     </div>
 784     <div class="padding"></div>
 785
 786     <div class="entry">
 787       <div class="title">
 788         <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>
 789       </div>
 790       <div class="date">
 791         10th September 2013
 792       </div>
 793       <div class="body">
 794         <p>I was introduced to the
 795 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
 796 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 797 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 798 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 799 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 800 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 801 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 802 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
 803
 804 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 805 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 806 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
 807 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 808 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
 809
 810 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
 811 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 812 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 813 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 814 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 815 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
 816 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 817 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 818 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 819 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
 820 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 821 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 822 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 823 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 824 missing in Debian).</p>
 825
 826 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 827 scripts
 828 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
 829 and a administrative web interface
 830 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
 831 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 832 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
 833 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 834 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
 835 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 836 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
 837 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 838 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 839 this is really working yet, see
 840 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
 841 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 842 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 843 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 844 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 845 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 846 with lots of half baked features.</p>
 847
 848 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 849 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 850 at.</p>
 851
 852 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
 853
 854 <ol>
 855
 856 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
 857 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
 858 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 859 to the Debian installer:<p>
 860 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
 861
 862 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 863 install on.</li>
 864
 865 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 866 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
 867
 868 </ol>
 869
 870 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
 871
 872 <ol>
 873
 874 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
 875 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
 876 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
 877 <pre>
 878 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
 879 </pre></li>
 880 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
 881 <pre>
 882 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 883    apt-key add -
 884 apt-get update
 885 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 886 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 887 </pre></li>
 888 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
 889
 890 </ol>
 891
 892 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 893 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 894 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 895 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 896 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 897
 898 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 899 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 900 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 901 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 902
 903 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 904 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 905 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 906 irc.debian.org and the
 907 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 908 mailing list</a>.</p>
 909
 910 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 911 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 912 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 913 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 914 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 915 default password is 'secret'.</p>
 916
 917       </div>
 918       <div class="tags">
 919
 920
 921         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>.
 922
 923
 924       </div>
 925     </div>
 926     <div class="padding"></div>
 927
 928     <div class="entry">
 929       <div class="title">
 930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
 931       </div>
 932       <div class="date">
 933         22nd August 2013
 934       </div>
 935       <div class="body">
 936         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 937 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
 938 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
 939
 940 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
 941
 942 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 943 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
 944
 945 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
 946
 947 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
 948 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 949 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 950 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
 951 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 952 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 953 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 954 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
 955 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
 956 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
 957 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
 958 desktop contains
 959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
 960 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
 961 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
 962 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
 963
 964 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
 965 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
 966 release.</p>
 967
 968 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 969 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 970 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 971 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 972 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
 973 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
 974 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
 975 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
 976 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
 977 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
 978 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
 979
 980 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
 981
 982 <ul>
 983
 984 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
 985     work also without a attached tty.</li>
 986 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
 987     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
 988     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
 989     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
 990     required).</li>
 991
 992 </ul>
 993
 994 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
 995
 996 <ul>
 997
 998 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
 999 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
1000 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
1001 stick ISO image.</li>
1002 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
1003 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
1004 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
1005     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
1006     cope with this.</li>
1007 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
1008 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
1009     empty password hashes.</li>
1010 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
1011     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
1012     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
1013
1014 </ul>
1015
1016 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1017
1018 <ul>
1019
1020 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1021     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1022 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
1023     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
1024
1025 </ul>
1026
1027 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1028
1029 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1030
1031 <ul>
1032
1033 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
1034
1035 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
1036
1037 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
1038
1039 </ul>
1040
1041 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
1042 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
1043
1044 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1045
1046 <ul>
1047
1048 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
1049 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
1050 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
1051
1052 </ul>
1053
1054 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
1055 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
1056
1057
1058 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1059
1060 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1061
1062       </div>
1063       <div class="tags">
1064
1065
1066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1067
1068
1069       </div>
1070     </div>
1071     <div class="padding"></div>
1072
1073     <div class="entry">
1074       <div class="title">
1075         <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>
1076       </div>
1077       <div class="date">
1078         18th August 2013
1079       </div>
1080       <div class="body">
1081         <p>Earlier, I reported about
1082 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
1083 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
1084 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
1085 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1086 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1087 currently on the disk.</p>
1088
1089 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1090 <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>
1091 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1092 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1093 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1094 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
1095 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1096 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
1097 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1098 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
1099 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
1100 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1101 the broken disks.</p>
1102
1103       </div>
1104       <div class="tags">
1105
1106
1107         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>.
1108
1109
1110       </div>
1111     </div>
1112     <div class="padding"></div>
1113
1114     <div class="entry">
1115       <div class="title">
1116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
1117       </div>
1118       <div class="date">
1119          2nd August 2013
1120       </div>
1121       <div class="body">
1122         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
1123 have worked on a Norwegian
1124 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1125 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1126 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
1127 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
1128 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
1129 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
1130 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
1131 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
1132 progress of the translation:</p>
1133
1134 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1135
1136 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
1137 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
1138 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
1139 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
1140 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
1141 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
1142 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
1143 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
1144 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
1145 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
1146 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
1147
1148 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1149 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1150 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1151 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
1152 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
1153 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
1154 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
1155 project files currently available from
1156 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1157
1158 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1159 the updated
1160 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
1161 and
1162 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1163 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
1164 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1165 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
1166
1167       </div>
1168       <div class="tags">
1169
1170
1171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1172
1173
1174       </div>
1175     </div>
1176     <div class="padding"></div>
1177
1178     <div class="entry">
1179       <div class="title">
1180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
1181       </div>
1182       <div class="date">
1183         27th July 2013
1184       </div>
1185       <div class="body">
1186         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1187 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
1188
1189 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
1190 2013-07-27</strong></p>
1191
1192 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1193 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1194
1195 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1196
1197 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1198 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1199 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1200 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1201 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1202 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1203 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1204 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1205 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1206 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1207 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1208 desktop contains
1209 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1210 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1211 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1212 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1213
1214 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1215 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1216 Squeeze release.</p>
1217
1218 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1219 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1220 release.</p>
1221
1222 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1223
1224 <ul>
1225
1226 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
1227    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
1228 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
1229    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
1230    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
1231    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
1232    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
1233 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
1234 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
1235 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
1236    crash bugs.</li>
1237
1238 </ul>
1239
1240 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1241
1242 <ul>
1243
1244 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
1245    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
1246 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
1247    netinst CD.</li>
1248 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
1249    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
1250 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
1251    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
1252    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
1253 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
1254    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
1255    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
1256 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
1257    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
1258    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
1259 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
1260    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
1261 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
1262
1263 </ul>
1264
1265 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1266
1267 <ul>
1268
1269 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
1270 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1271     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1272 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
1273
1274 </ul>
1275
1276 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1277
1278 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1279
1280 <ul>
1281
1282 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
1283
1284 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
1285
1286 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
1287
1288 </ul>
1289
1290 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
1291 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
1292
1293 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1294
1295 <ul>
1296
1297 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
1298 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
1299 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
1300
1301 </ul>
1302
1303 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
1304 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
1305
1306
1307 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1308
1309 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1310
1311       </div>
1312       <div class="tags">
1313
1314
1315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1316
1317
1318       </div>
1319     </div>
1320     <div class="padding"></div>
1321
1322     <div class="entry">
1323       <div class="title">
1324         <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>
1325       </div>
1326       <div class="date">
1327         17th July 2013
1328       </div>
1329       <div class="body">
1330         <p>Today I switched to
1331 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1332 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
1333 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1334 <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
1335 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1336 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1337 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1338 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1339 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
1340 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1341 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1342 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1343 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1344 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1345 station from now on.</p>
1346
1347 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1348 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1349 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
1350 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1351 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1352 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
1353 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1354 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1355 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1356 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1357 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1358 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1359
1360 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1361 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
1362 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1363 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1364 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
1365 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
1366 parameters are tuned:</p>
1367
1368 <ul>
1369
1370 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1371     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
1372
1373 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1374     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1375     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
1376
1377 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1378     systems.</li>
1379
1380 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1381     /etc/fstab.</li>
1382
1383 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
1384
1385 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1386     cron.daily).</li>
1387
1388 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1389     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
1390
1391 </ul>
1392
1393 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1394 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1395 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1396 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1397 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1398 from getting the data on the disk (see
1399 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
1400 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1401 right thing to do.</p>
1402
1403 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1404 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1405 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
1406
1407 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1408 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1409 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1410 instead of during my work.</p>
1411
1412 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1413 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
1414
1415 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
1416 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1417 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
1418
1419 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1420 there.</p>
1421
1422 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1423 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1424 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1425 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1426 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1427 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1428 back.</p>
1429
1430       </div>
1431       <div class="tags">
1432
1433
1434         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>.
1435
1436
1437       </div>
1438     </div>
1439     <div class="padding"></div>
1440
1441     <div class="entry">
1442       <div class="title">
1443         <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>
1444       </div>
1445       <div class="date">
1446         10th July 2013
1447       </div>
1448       <div class="body">
1449         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
1451 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
1452 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1453 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
1454 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
1455 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
1456 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
1457
1458 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1459 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
1460 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
1461 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1462 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1463 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
1464 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
1465 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
1466 lock up when I download a new
1467 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
1468 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1469 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
1470
1471 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1472 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1473 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1474 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1475 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1476 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1477
1478 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1479 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
1480 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1481 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1482 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1483 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1484
1485 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1486 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
1487 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1488 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1489 exist).</p>
1490
1491       </div>
1492       <div class="tags">
1493
1494
1495         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>.
1496
1497
1498       </div>
1499     </div>
1500     <div class="padding"></div>
1501
1502     <div class="entry">
1503       <div class="title">
1504         <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>
1505       </div>
1506       <div class="date">
1507          9th July 2013
1508       </div>
1509       <div class="body">
1510         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
1511 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1512 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1513 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
1514 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1515 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
1516 Bitraf</a>.</p>
1517
1518 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
1519 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
1520 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
1521 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
1522 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</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/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
1538       </div>
1539       <div class="date">
1540          5th July 2013
1541       </div>
1542       <div class="body">
1543         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1544 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
1545 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
1546 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1547 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
1548 ended up picking a
1549 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
1550 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1551 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
1552 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
1553 on that below.</p>
1554
1555 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1556 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1557 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1558 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1559 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1560 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
1561 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
1562 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
1563 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
1564
1565 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
1566 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
1567 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
1568 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
1569 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
1570 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
1571 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
1572
1573 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
1574 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
1575
1576 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
1577 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
1578 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
1579 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
1580 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
1581 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
1582 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
1583 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
1584 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
1585 kernel developers as
1586 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
1587 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
1588 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
1589 Lenovo forums, both for
1590 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
1591 2012-11-10</a> and for
1592 <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
1593 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
1594 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
1595 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
1596 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
1597 There is even a
1598 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
1599 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
1600 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
1601
1602 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
1603 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
1604 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
1605 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
1606 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
1607 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
1608 fixed. :)</p>
1609
1610       </div>
1611       <div class="tags">
1612
1613
1614         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>.
1615
1616
1617       </div>
1618     </div>
1619     <div class="padding"></div>
1620
1621     <div class="entry">
1622       <div class="title">
1623         <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>
1624       </div>
1625       <div class="date">
1626          4th July 2013
1627       </div>
1628       <div class="body">
1629         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1630 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1631 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
1632 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
1633 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
1634 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
1635 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1636 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1637 with an expencive door stop.</p>
1638
1639 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1640 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1641 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1642 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1643 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1644 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1645 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
1646
1647 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1648 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1649 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
1650 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1651 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1652 new laptop now. :)</p>
1653
1654 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
1655
1656       </div>
1657       <div class="tags">
1658
1659
1660         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>.
1661
1662
1663       </div>
1664     </div>
1665     <div class="padding"></div>
1666
1667     <div class="entry">
1668       <div class="title">
1669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
1670       </div>
1671       <div class="date">
1672          3rd July 2013
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="body">
1675         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1676 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
1677
1678 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
1679 2013-07-03</strong></p>
1680
1681 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1682 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1683
1684 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1685
1686 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1687 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1688 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1689 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1690 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1691 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1692 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1693 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1694 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1695 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1696 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1697 desktop contains
1698 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1699 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1700 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1701 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1702
1703 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1704 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1705 Squeeze release.</p>
1706
1707 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1708 <ul>
1709   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
1710   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
1711     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
1712     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
1713   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
1714     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
1715     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
1716   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
1717     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
1718     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
1719     too.</li>
1720   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
1721     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
1722 </ul>
1723 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1724 <ul>
1725   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
1726   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
1727   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
1728     up for some language options.</li>
1729   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
1730   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
1731   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
1732     d-i is doing it.</li>
1733   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
1734     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
1735   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
1736     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
1737     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
1738   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
1739     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
1740   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
1741   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
1742     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
1743   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
1744     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
1745 </ul>
1746 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1747 <ul>
1748   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
1749     available yet (698840).</li>
1750   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
1751 </ul>
1752 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1753
1754 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1755 <ul>
1756   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
1757   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
1758   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
1759 </ul>
1760
1761 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
1762 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
1763
1764 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1765 <ul>
1766   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
1767   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
1768   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
1769 </ul>
1770
1771 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
1772 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
1773
1774 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1775
1776 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
1777
1778       </div>
1779       <div class="tags">
1780
1781
1782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1783
1784
1785       </div>
1786     </div>
1787     <div class="padding"></div>
1788
1789     <div class="entry">
1790       <div class="title">
1791         <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>
1792       </div>
1793       <div class="date">
1794         25th June 2013
1795       </div>
1796       <div class="body">
1797         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1798 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1799 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1800 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
1801 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1802 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
1803 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
1804 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1805 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1806 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1807 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
1808
1809 <p><pre>
1810 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1811 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1812 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1813 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1814 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1815 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1816 firmware-ipw2x00
1817 firmware-ipw2x00
1818 Preconfiguring packages ...
1819 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1820 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1821 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1822 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
1823 #
1824 </pre></p>
1825
1826 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1827 printed instead:</p>
1828
1829 <p><pre>
1830 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1831 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1832 #
1833 </pre></p>
1834
1835 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1836 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
1837
1838 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
1839 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1840 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
1841 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1842 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1843 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
1844 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1845 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
1846 machine.</p>
1847
1848 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1849 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1850 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
1851 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1852 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1853 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
1854
1855       </div>
1856       <div class="tags">
1857
1858
1859         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>.
1860
1861
1862       </div>
1863     </div>
1864     <div class="padding"></div>
1865
1866     <div class="entry">
1867       <div class="title">
1868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
1869       </div>
1870       <div class="date">
1871         22nd June 2013
1872       </div>
1873       <div class="body">
1874         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1875 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
1876 which check that services are running, working, and return the
1877 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
1878 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
1879 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
1880 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
1881 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
1882 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
1883
1884 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
1885 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
1886 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
1887 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
1888 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
1889 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
1890 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
1891 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
1892 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
1893 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
1894 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
1895 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
1896 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
1897 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
1898
1899 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
1900 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
1901 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
1902 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
1903 the problem.</p>
1904
1905 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
1906 please join us on
1907 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
1908 irc.debian.org</a> and the
1909 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
1910 list.</p>
1911
1912       </div>
1913       <div class="tags">
1914
1915
1916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1917
1918
1919       </div>
1920     </div>
1921     <div class="padding"></div>
1922
1923     <div class="entry">
1924       <div class="title">
1925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
1926       </div>
1927       <div class="date">
1928         17th June 2013
1929       </div>
1930       <div class="body">
1931         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
1932 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
1933 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
1934 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
1935 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
1936 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
1937 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
1938 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
1939
1940 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1941
1942 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
1943 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
1944 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
1945 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
1946 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
1947 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
1948 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
1949 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
1950 field.</p>
1951
1952 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
1953 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
1954 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
1955 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
1956 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
1957 the only one we have in our country.</p>
1958
1959 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1960 project?</strong></p>
1961
1962 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
1963 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
1964 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
1965 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
1966 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
1967 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
1968 ways to contribute.</p>
1969
1970 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
1971 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
1972 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
1973 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
1974 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
1975 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
1976 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
1977 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
1978 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
1979 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
1980
1981 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1982 Edu?</strong></p>
1983
1984 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
1985 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
1986 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
1987 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
1988 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
1989 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
1990 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
1991 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
1992
1993 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
1994 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
1995 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
1996 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
1997 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
1998 project.</p>
1999
2000 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2001 Edu?</strong></p>
2002
2003 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
2004 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
2005 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
2006 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
2007 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
2008 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
2009 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
2010 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
2011 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
2012
2013 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
2014 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
2015 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
2016 on.</p>
2017
2018 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2019
2020 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
2021 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
2022 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
2023 Enlightenment project a lot!),
2024 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
2025 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
2026 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
2027 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
2028 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
2029
2030 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2031 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2032
2033 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
2034 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
2035 that:</p>
2036
2037 <ul>
2038
2039 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
2040
2041 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2042     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2043     of teenagers more?</li>
2044
2045 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2046     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2047     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2048     them!)</li>
2049
2050 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2051     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2052     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
2053
2054 </ul>
2055
2056 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2057 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2058 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2059 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2060 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
2061
2062       </div>
2063       <div class="tags">
2064
2065
2066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2067
2068
2069       </div>
2070     </div>
2071     <div class="padding"></div>
2072
2073     <div class="entry">
2074       <div class="title">
2075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
2076       </div>
2077       <div class="date">
2078         12th June 2013
2079       </div>
2080       <div class="body">
2081         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2082 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2083 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2084 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2085 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
2086 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
2087
2088 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2089
2090 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2091 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2092 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
2093
2094 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2095 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2096 each other.</p>
2097
2098 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2099 project?</strong></p>
2100
2101 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2102 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2103 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
2104 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2105 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2106 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2107 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2108 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2109 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2110 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2111 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2112 we'll get there one day.</p>
2113
2114 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2115 Edu?</strong></p>
2116
2117 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2118 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2119 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2120 very high quality work.</p>
2121
2122 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2123 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2124 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2125 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2126 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
2127
2128 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2129 Edu?</strong></p>
2130
2131 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2132 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2133 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
2134
2135 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2136 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2137 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2138 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2139 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2140 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2141 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2142 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2143 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2144 currently.</p>
2145
2146 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2147 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2148 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2149 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
2150 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2151 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2152 autonomous.</p>
2153
2154 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2155
2156 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
2157 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2158 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2159 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2160 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
2161
2162 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2163 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2164 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2165 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2166 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2167 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2168 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2169 X.</p>
2170
2171 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2172 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
2173 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2174 it :p)
2175
2176 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2177 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2178
2179 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2180 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2181 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2182 that.</p>
2183
2184 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2185 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2186 advantage of that.</p>
2187
2188 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2189 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2190 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2191 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2192 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2193 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2194 best solution for them.</p>
2195
2196 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2197 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2198 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
2199
2200       </div>
2201       <div class="tags">
2202
2203
2204         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2205
2206
2207       </div>
2208     </div>
2209     <div class="padding"></div>
2210
2211     <div class="entry">
2212       <div class="title">
2213         <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>
2214       </div>
2215       <div class="date">
2216         11th June 2013
2217       </div>
2218       <div class="body">
2219         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2220 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2221 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
2222 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
2223 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2224 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
2225 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2226 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
2227 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2228 i915 driver used by the
2229 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2230 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
2231
2232 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
2233 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2234 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
2235 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2236 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
2237
2238 <pre>
2239 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2240 update-initramfs -u -k all
2241 </pre>
2242
2243 <p>Since March 2012 there is
2244 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2245 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2246 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2247 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
2248 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2249 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
2250 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
2251 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2252 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2253 number.</p>
2254
2255 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2256 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2257
2258 <p><pre>
2259 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2260     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2261     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2262  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2263  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2264     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2265  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2266     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2267  Latency: 0
2268  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2269  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2270  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2271  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2272  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2273  Capabilities: <access denied>
2274  Kernel driver in use: i915
2275 </pre></p>
2276
2277 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2278
2279 <p><pre>
2280 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2281        ...
2282         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2283         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2284        ...
2285 }
2286 </pre></p>
2287
2288 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2289 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2290 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2291 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
2292 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2293 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2294 yet shown up in
2295 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
2296 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2297 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2298 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2299 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2300 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2301
2302 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2303 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
2304 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
2305 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2306 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
2307 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2308 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2309 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2310 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2311 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2312 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2313 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2314
2315 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2316 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2317 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2318 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2319 backlight.</p>
2320
2321       </div>
2322       <div class="tags">
2323
2324
2325         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>.
2326
2327
2328       </div>
2329     </div>
2330     <div class="padding"></div>
2331
2332     <div class="entry">
2333       <div class="title">
2334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
2335       </div>
2336       <div class="date">
2337         10th June 2013
2338       </div>
2339       <div class="body">
2340         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2341 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2342
2343 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
2344 2013-06-10</strong></p>
2345
2346 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2347 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2348
2349 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2350
2351 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2352 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2353 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2354 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2355 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2356 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2357 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2358 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2359 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2360 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2361 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2362 desktop contains
2363 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2364 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2365 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2366 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2367
2368 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2369 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2370 Squeeze release.</p>
2371
2372 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2373
2374 <ul>
2375
2376 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
2377 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
2378 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2379 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2380 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2381
2382 </ul>
2383
2384 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2385
2386 <ul>
2387
2388 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
2389 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2390 <li>New Romanian translation.
2391 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2392 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
2393 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2394 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2395 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2396 <li>More testsuite tests.
2397 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2398 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2399
2400 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2401 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
2402
2403 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2404 them up with GOsa².</li>
2405
2406 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
2407
2408 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2409 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2410 entered password). </li>
2411
2412 </ul>
2413
2414 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2415
2416 <ul>
2417
2418 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
2419
2420 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2421 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2422 missing import feature).</li>
2423
2424 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
2425
2426 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
2427 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2428 unfixed.</li>
2429
2430 </ul>
2431
2432 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2433
2434 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2435
2436 <ul>
2437
2438 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
2439
2440 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
2441
2442 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
2443
2444 </ul>
2445
2446 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
2447 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
2448
2449 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2450
2451 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2452
2453       </div>
2454       <div class="tags">
2455
2456
2457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2458
2459
2460       </div>
2461     </div>
2462     <div class="padding"></div>
2463
2464     <div class="entry">
2465       <div class="title">
2466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
2467       </div>
2468       <div class="date">
2469          5th June 2013
2470       </div>
2471       <div class="body">
2472         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
2473 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
2474 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
2475 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
2476 the project:
2477
2478 <ol>
2479
2480 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
2481   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
2482   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
2483   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
2484   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
2485
2486 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
2487   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
2488   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
2489   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
2490   #698840</a>.</li>
2491
2492 </ol>
2493
2494 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
2495 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2496 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
2497
2498       </div>
2499       <div class="tags">
2500
2501
2502         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2503
2504
2505       </div>
2506     </div>
2507     <div class="padding"></div>
2508
2509     <div class="entry">
2510       <div class="title">
2511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
2512       </div>
2513       <div class="date">
2514          4th June 2013
2515       </div>
2516       <div class="body">
2517         <p>It has been a while since my last English
2518 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2519 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
2520 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
2521 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
2522 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
2523
2524 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2525
2526 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
2527 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
2528 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
2529 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
2530
2531 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
2532 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
2533 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
2534
2535 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2536 project?</strong></p>
2537
2538 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
2539 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
2540 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
2541 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
2542 manual.
2543
2544 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
2545 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
2546 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
2547 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
2548
2549 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
2550 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
2551 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
2552 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
2553 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
2554 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
2555 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
2556 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
2557 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
2558 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
2559
2560 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
2561 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
2562 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
2563 beautiful project.</p>
2564
2565 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2566 Edu?</strong></p>
2567
2568 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
2569 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
2570 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
2571
2572 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
2573 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
2574 of educational free software.</p>
2575
2576 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2577 Edu?</strong></p>
2578
2579 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
2580 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
2581 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
2582 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
2583 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
2584
2585 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
2586 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
2587 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
2588 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
2589 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
2590 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
2591 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
2592 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
2593
2594 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2595
2596 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
2597 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
2598 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
2599 also using the mathematical software
2600 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
2601 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
2602 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
2603
2604 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
2605 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
2606 statistics?</strong></p>
2607
2608 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
2609 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
2610 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
2611 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
2612
2613 <ul>
2614
2615 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
2616 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
2617 constructions in planar geometry
2618
2619 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
2620 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
2621 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
2622
2623 </ul>
2624
2625 <p>I like also
2626 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
2627 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
2628 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
2629
2630 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2631 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2632
2633 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
2634
2635 <ul>
2636
2637 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
2638
2639 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
2640     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
2641     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
2642
2643 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
2644
2645 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
2646     system.</li>
2647
2648 </ul>
2649
2650       </div>
2651       <div class="tags">
2652
2653
2654         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2655
2656
2657       </div>
2658     </div>
2659     <div class="padding"></div>
2660
2661     <div class="entry">
2662       <div class="title">
2663         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
2664       </div>
2665       <div class="date">
2666          1st June 2013
2667       </div>
2668       <div class="body">
2669         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2670 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
2671 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
2672 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
2673 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
2674 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
2675 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
2676 program.</p>
2677
2678 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
2679
2680 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
2681 <p>
2682 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
2683 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
2684 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
2685 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
2686 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2687 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
2688 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
2689 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
2690 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
2691 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
2692 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
2693 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
2694 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
2695 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
2696 </p>
2697
2698 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
2699 <p>
2700 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
2701 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
2702 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
2703 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
2704 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
2705 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
2706 </p>
2707
2708 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
2709 <p>
2710 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
2711 </p>
2712
2713 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
2714 <p>
2715 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
2716 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
2717 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
2718 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
2719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
2720 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
2721 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
2722 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
2723 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
2724 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
2725 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
2726 </p>
2727
2728 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
2729 <p>
2730 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2731 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
2732 </p>
2733
2734 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
2735 <p>
2736 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
2737 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
2738 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
2739 </p>
2740
2741 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
2742 <p>
2743 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2744 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
2745 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
2746 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
2747 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
2748 </p>
2749
2750 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
2751 <p>
2752 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
2753 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
2754 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2755 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
2756 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
2757 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
2758 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
2759 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
2760 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
2761 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
2762 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
2763 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
2764 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
2765 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
2766 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
2767 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
2768 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
2769 </p>
2770
2771 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
2772 <p>
2773 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2774 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
2775 </p>
2776
2777 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
2778 <p>
2779 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
2780 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
2781 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
2782 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
2783 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
2784 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
2785 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
2786 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
2787 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
2788 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
2789 </p>
2790
2791 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
2792 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
2793 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
2794 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
2795 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
2796 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
2797 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
2798
2799       </div>
2800       <div class="tags">
2801
2802
2803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2804
2805
2806       </div>
2807     </div>
2808     <div class="padding"></div>
2809
2810     <div class="entry">
2811       <div class="title">
2812         <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>
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="date">
2815         27th May 2013
2816       </div>
2817       <div class="body">
2818         <p>Two days ago, I asked
2819 <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
2820 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2821 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
2822 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2823 and Windows 8.</p>
2824
2825 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2826 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2827 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2828 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2829 enough to tell.</p>
2830
2831 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2832 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
2833 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2834 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
2835 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2836 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
2837 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2838 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2839 to follow.</p>
2840
2841 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2842 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2843 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2844 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
2845 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2846 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
2847 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
2848 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
2849
2850 <p>I've updated the
2851 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
2852 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
2853 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2854 machine.</p>
2855
2856 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2857 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
2858
2859       </div>
2860       <div class="tags">
2861
2862
2863         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>.
2864
2865
2866       </div>
2867     </div>
2868     <div class="padding"></div>
2869
2870     <div class="entry">
2871       <div class="title">
2872         <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>
2873       </div>
2874       <div class="date">
2875         25th May 2013
2876       </div>
2877       <div class="body">
2878         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
2879 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
2880 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
2881 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
2882 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2883 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
2884
2885 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2886 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
2887 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
2888 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2889 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2890 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
2891 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2892 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2893 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2894 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
2895
2896 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2897 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2898 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
2899 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2900 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2901 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
2902
2903 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2904 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
2905 on new Laptops?</p>
2906
2907       </div>
2908       <div class="tags">
2909
2910
2911         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>.
2912
2913
2914       </div>
2915     </div>
2916     <div class="padding"></div>
2917
2918     <div class="entry">
2919       <div class="title">
2920         <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>
2921       </div>
2922       <div class="date">
2923         17th May 2013
2924       </div>
2925       <div class="body">
2926         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
2927 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
2928 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2929 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
2930 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2931 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
2932 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2933 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2934 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
2935 donate some money</a>.
2936
2937 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2938 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2939 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
2940 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2941 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
2942
2943 <p>The script,
2944 <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/>
2945 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2946 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2947 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
2948
2949 <ol>
2950
2951 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
2952 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
2953 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2954     our configuration.</li>
2955 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2956     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2957     according to the profile specified in the config above,
2958     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
2959 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2960     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
2961 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
2962
2963 </ol>
2964
2965 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2966 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2967 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2968 the needed packages.</p>
2969
2970 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2971 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
2972 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2973 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
2974 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2975 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
2976
2977 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2978 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2979 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
2980
2981 <p><pre>
2982 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
2983 DESKTOP="lxde"
2984 </pre></p>
2985
2986 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2987 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2988 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2989 boot.</p>
2990
2991       </div>
2992       <div class="tags">
2993
2994
2995         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>.
2996
2997
2998       </div>
2999     </div>
3000     <div class="padding"></div>
3001
3002     <div class="entry">
3003       <div class="title">
3004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3005       </div>
3006       <div class="date">
3007         14th May 2013
3008       </div>
3009       <div class="body">
3010         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3011 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
3012 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
3013
3014 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
3015 2013-05-14</strong></p>
3016
3017 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
3018 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
3019 codename "Wheezy".</p>
3020
3021 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3022
3023 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
3024 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3025 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
3026 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3027 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3028 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3029 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
3030 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
3031
3032 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3033 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3034 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3035
3036 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3037 <ul>
3038   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3039     default.</li>
3040   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
3041   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
3042   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3043     ibus-anthy.</li>
3044 </ul>
3045
3046 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3047 <ul>
3048
3049   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3050     reliability improvements.</li>
3051   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3052     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
3053   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3054     problems.</li>
3055   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3056     direct:// URL.</li>
3057   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
3058   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
3059   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
3060   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3061     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
3062   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3063     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
3064 </ul>
3065
3066 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3067 <ul>
3068
3069   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3070     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
3071     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
3072   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
3073   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3074     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
3075   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
3076   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
3077   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3078     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
3079   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3080     password submission problem
3081     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
3082
3083 </ul>
3084
3085 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3086
3087 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3088 <ul>
3089
3090   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
3091   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
3092   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
3093
3094 </ul>
3095
3096 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
3097
3098 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
3099
3100 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3101
3102 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3103
3104       </div>
3105       <div class="tags">
3106
3107
3108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3109
3110
3111       </div>
3112     </div>
3113     <div class="padding"></div>
3114
3115     <div class="entry">
3116       <div class="title">
3117         <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>
3118       </div>
3119       <div class="date">
3120         11th May 2013
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="body">
3123         <P>In January,
3124 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3125 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3126 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3127 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3128 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3129 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3130 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3131 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3132 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3133 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3134 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3135 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3136
3137 <p><table>
3138 <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>
3139 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3140 <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>
3141 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3142 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3143 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3144 <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>
3145 <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>
3146 <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>
3147 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3148 </table></p>
3149
3150 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3151 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3152 available in experimental.</p>
3153
3154 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3155 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3156 for LEGO designers.</p>
3157
3158       </div>
3159       <div class="tags">
3160
3161
3162         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>.
3163
3164
3165       </div>
3166     </div>
3167     <div class="padding"></div>
3168
3169     <div class="entry">
3170       <div class="title">
3171         <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>
3172       </div>
3173       <div class="date">
3174          5th May 2013
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="body">
3177         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3178 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3179 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3180 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3181 soon.</p>
3182
3183 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3184 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3185 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3186 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3187 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3188 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3189 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3190 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3191 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3192 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3193 Edu.</a>
3194
3195 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3196 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3197 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3198 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3199 follow.<p>
3200
3201       </div>
3202       <div class="tags">
3203
3204
3205         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>.
3206
3207
3208       </div>
3209     </div>
3210     <div class="padding"></div>
3211
3212     <div class="entry">
3213       <div class="title">
3214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
3215       </div>
3216       <div class="date">
3217         26th April 2013
3218       </div>
3219       <div class="body">
3220         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3221 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
3222 announcement:</p>
3223
3224 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
3225 2013-04-26</strong></p>
3226
3227 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
3228 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3229
3230 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3231
3232 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3233 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3234 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3235 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3236 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3237 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3238 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3239 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3240 installed via the network.</p>
3241
3242 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3243 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3244 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3245
3246 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3247
3248 <ul>
3249 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3250   <ul>
3251      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
3252      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
3253          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3254          manual.)</li>
3255      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
3256      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
3257      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
3258      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
3259      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
3260      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
3261      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
3262      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
3263      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
3264      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
3265      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
3266      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3267          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3268          manual</a> for more details.</li>
3269      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
3270          installation.</li>
3271      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
3272          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
3273   </ul></li>
3274 </ul>
3275
3276 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
3277 <ul>
3278 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3279     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3280     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
3281 </ul>
3282
3283 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
3284 <ul>
3285 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3286     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3287     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
3288 </ul>
3289
3290 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3291 <ul>
3292 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3293     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3294     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
3295 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3296     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3297     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
3298 </ul>
3299
3300 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
3301 <ul>
3302 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3303     yet.</li>
3304 </ul>
3305
3306 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
3307
3308 <ul>
3309 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3310     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3311     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
3312 </ul>
3313
3314 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3315
3316 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3317 <ul>
3318 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3319 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3320 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
3321 </ul>
3322
3323 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
3324
3325 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
3326
3327 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3328
3329 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3330
3331       </div>
3332       <div class="tags">
3333
3334
3335         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3336
3337
3338       </div>
3339     </div>
3340     <div class="padding"></div>
3341
3342     <div class="entry">
3343       <div class="title">
3344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="date">
3347         16th April 2013
3348       </div>
3349       <div class="body">
3350         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3351 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3352 Details about the gathering can be found
3353 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3354 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
3355 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3356 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3357 weekend.</p>
3358
3359 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3360 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3361 Edu release.</p>
3362
3363 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
3364
3365       </div>
3366       <div class="tags">
3367
3368
3369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3370
3371
3372       </div>
3373     </div>
3374     <div class="padding"></div>
3375
3376     <div class="entry">
3377       <div class="title">
3378         <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>
3379       </div>
3380       <div class="date">
3381          3rd April 2013
3382       </div>
3383       <div class="body">
3384         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3385 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3386 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3387 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3388
3389 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3390 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3391 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3392 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3393 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3394 BTS. :)</p>
3395
3396       </div>
3397       <div class="tags">
3398
3399
3400         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>.
3401
3402
3403       </div>
3404     </div>
3405     <div class="padding"></div>
3406
3407     <div class="entry">
3408       <div class="title">
3409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
3410       </div>
3411       <div class="date">
3412         26th March 2013
3413       </div>
3414       <div class="body">
3415         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
3416 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
3417 font you use when printing.</p>
3418
3419 <p>Three years ago,
3420 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
3421 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
3422 changed their default front from
3423 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
3424 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
3425 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
3426 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
3427 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
3428 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
3429 prints.</p>
3430
3431 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
3432 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
3433 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
3434 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
3435 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
3436 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
3437 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
3438 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
3439 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
3440 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
3441 depend on the documents printed.</p>
3442
3443 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
3444 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
3445 and save some money in the process.</p>
3446
3447 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
3448 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
3449 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
3450 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
3451 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
3452 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
3453 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
3454 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
3455 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
3456
3457       </div>
3458       <div class="tags">
3459
3460
3461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3462
3463
3464       </div>
3465     </div>
3466     <div class="padding"></div>
3467
3468     <div class="entry">
3469       <div class="title">
3470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
3471       </div>
3472       <div class="date">
3473         24th March 2013
3474       </div>
3475       <div class="body">
3476         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
3477 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
3478 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
3479 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
3480 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
3481 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
3482 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
3483 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
3484 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
3485 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
3486 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
3487 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
3488
3489 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
3490 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
3491 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
3492 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
3493 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
3494 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
3495 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
3496 all I had to do was to use the
3497 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
3498 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
3499 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
3500 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
3501 xsltproc/fop (aka
3502 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
3503 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
3504 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
3505 technical detail.</p>
3506
3507 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
3508 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
3509 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
3510 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
3511 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
3512 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
3513
3514 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
3515 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
3516 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
3517 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
3518 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
3519 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
3520 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
3521 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
3522 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
3523
3524 <p><blockquote><pre>
3525 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3526 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3527   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
3528     &lt;hr/&gt;
3529   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3530 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3531 </pre></blockquote></p>
3532
3533 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
3534
3535 <p><blockquote><pre>
3536 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3537 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3538   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
3539     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
3540       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
3541     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
3542   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3543 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3544 </pre></blockquote></p>
3545
3546 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
3547 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
3548 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
3549 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
3550 enough.</p>
3551
3552 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
3553 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
3554 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
3555 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
3556 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
3557 look like this:</p>
3558
3559 <p><blockquote><pre>
3560 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3561 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3562   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
3563     &lt;br/&gt;
3564   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3565 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3566 </pre></blockquote></p>
3567
3568 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
3569
3570 <p><blockquote><pre>
3571 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3572 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
3573   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
3574   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
3575     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
3576   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3577 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3578 </pre></blockquote></p>
3579
3580 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
3581 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
3582 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
3583 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
3584 page.</p>
3585
3586 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
3587 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
3588 github</a>
3589 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
3590 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
3591 days.</p>
3592
3593       </div>
3594       <div class="tags">
3595
3596
3597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3598
3599
3600       </div>
3601     </div>
3602     <div class="padding"></div>
3603
3604     <div class="entry">
3605       <div class="title">
3606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
3607       </div>
3608       <div class="date">
3609         17th March 2013
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="body">
3612         <p>Via
3613 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
3614 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
3615 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
3616 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3617 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
3618 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
3619 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
3620
3621 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
3622 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
3623
3624 <blockquote>
3625 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
3626 </blockquote>
3627
3628 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
3629
3630 <blockquote>
3631 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
3632 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
3633 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
3634 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
3635 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
3636 </blockquote>
3637
3638 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
3639 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
3640 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
3641 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
3642
3643 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
3644 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
3645
3646 <blockquote>
3647 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
3648 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
3649 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
3650 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
3651 </blockquote>
3652
3653 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
3654 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
3655 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
3656 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
3657 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
3658
3659 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
3660 embedding:</p>
3661
3662 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3663
3664       </div>
3665       <div class="tags">
3666
3667
3668         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3669
3670
3671       </div>
3672     </div>
3673     <div class="padding"></div>
3674
3675     <div class="entry">
3676       <div class="title">
3677         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
3678       </div>
3679       <div class="date">
3680          8th March 2013
3681       </div>
3682       <div class="body">
3683         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
3684 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
3685 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
3686 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
3687 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
3688 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
3689 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
3690
3691 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
3692
3693 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
3694 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
3695
3696 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
3697 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
3698 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
3699 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
3700 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
3701 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
3702
3703 <p>Images are available for download at
3704 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
3705
3706 <p>md5sums:
3707 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3708 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3709 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
3710
3711 <p>sha1sums:
3712 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3713 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3714 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
3715
3716 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
3717
3718 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
3719 2013-03-03:</p>
3720
3721 <ul>
3722   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
3723   <ul>
3724         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
3725         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
3726   </ul></li>
3727   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
3728   <ul>
3729         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
3730         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
3731   </ul></li>
3732   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
3733      <ul>
3734         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
3735         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
3736         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
3737                 Closes: #664596</li>
3738         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
3739                 Closes: #664976</li>
3740         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
3741            <ul>
3742                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
3743                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
3744            </ul></li>
3745         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
3746            <ul>
3747                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
3748                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
3749                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
3750                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
3751                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
3752            </ul></li>
3753         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
3754     </ul>
3755   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
3756     <ul>
3757         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
3758     </ul></li>
3759 </ul>
3760
3761 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
3762 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
3763 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
3764 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
3765
3766 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
3767 mailinglist
3768 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
3769 </p></blockquote>
3770
3771 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
3772
3773       </div>
3774       <div class="tags">
3775
3776
3777         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3778
3779
3780       </div>
3781     </div>
3782     <div class="padding"></div>
3783
3784     <div class="entry">
3785       <div class="title">
3786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
3787       </div>
3788       <div class="date">
3789          3rd March 2013
3790       </div>
3791       <div class="body">
3792         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
3793 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
3794 support using
3795 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
3796 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
3797 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
3798 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
3799 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
3800 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
3801 using the GNU LGPL, and
3802 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
3803
3804 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
3805 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
3806 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
3807 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
3808 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
3809 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
3810
3811 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
3812 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
3813 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
3814 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
3815 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
3816 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
3817 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
3818 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
3819 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
3820 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
3821 signal distribution is handled using
3822 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
3823 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
3824 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
3825 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
3826 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
3827 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
3828 them up a bit more first.</p>
3829
3830 <p>The development is coordinated on the
3831 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
3832 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
3833 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
3834 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
3835 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
3836 development.</p>
3837
3838       </div>
3839       <div class="tags">
3840
3841
3842         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3843
3844
3845       </div>
3846     </div>
3847     <div class="padding"></div>
3848
3849     <div class="entry">
3850       <div class="title">
3851         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
3852       </div>
3853       <div class="date">
3854         27th February 2013
3855       </div>
3856       <div class="body">
3857         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
3858 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
3859 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
3860 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
3861 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
3862 (where I am the chair of the board) and
3863 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
3864 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
3865 GNU», with this description:
3866
3867 <p><blockquote>
3868 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
3869 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
3870 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
3871 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
3872 </blockquote></p>
3873
3874 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
3875 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
3876 am really curious how many will show up.  See
3877 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
3878 page</a> for the location details.</p>
3879
3880       </div>
3881       <div class="tags">
3882
3883
3884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3885
3886
3887       </div>
3888     </div>
3889     <div class="padding"></div>
3890
3891     <div class="entry">
3892       <div class="title">
3893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
3894       </div>
3895       <div class="date">
3896         15th February 2013
3897       </div>
3898       <div class="body">
3899         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
3900 now a great source of free maps available from
3901 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
3902 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
3903 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
3904 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
3905 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
3906 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
3907 page for descriptions).</p>
3908
3909 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
3910 map you can just edit the
3911 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
3912 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
3913
3914       </div>
3915       <div class="tags">
3916
3917
3918         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
3919
3920
3921       </div>
3922     </div>
3923     <div class="padding"></div>
3924
3925     <div class="entry">
3926       <div class="title">
3927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
3928       </div>
3929       <div class="date">
3930         12th February 2013
3931       </div>
3932       <div class="body">
3933         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
3934 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
3935 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
3936 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
3937 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
3938 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
3939 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
3940 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
3941 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
3942 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
3943 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
3944 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
3945 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
3946 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
3947 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
3948 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
3949
3950 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
3951 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
3952 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
3953 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
3954 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
3955 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
3956 fields:</p>
3957
3958 <p><pre>
3959 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3960 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3961 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
3962 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3963 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3964 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3965 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3966 </pre></p>
3967
3968 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
3969 answer regarding
3970 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
3971 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
3972 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
3973 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
3974
3975 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
3976
3977 <p><pre>
3978 BEGIN:VCARD
3979 VERSION:2.1
3980 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
3981 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
3982 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
3983 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
3984 REV:20130212T095000Z
3985 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3986 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3987 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3988 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3989 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3990 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3991 END:VCARD
3992 </pre></p>
3993
3994 <p>The resulting QR code created using
3995 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
3996 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
3997 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
3998 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
3999 system.</p>
4000
4001 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
4002
4003 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
4004 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
4005 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
4006 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
4007
4008 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
4009 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
4010
4011       </div>
4012       <div class="tags">
4013
4014
4015         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4016
4017
4018       </div>
4019     </div>
4020     <div class="padding"></div>
4021
4022     <div class="entry">
4023       <div class="title">
4024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
4025       </div>
4026       <div class="date">
4027         10th February 2013
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="body">
4030         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
4031
4032 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
4033 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
4034 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
4035 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
4036 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
4037 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
4038 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
4039 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
4040 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
4041 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
4042 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
4043
4044 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
4045 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
4046 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
4047 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
4048 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
4049 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
4050 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
4051 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
4052 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
4053 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
4054 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
4055 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
4056 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
4057 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
4058 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
4059 ones own
4060 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
4061 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
4062 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
4063 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
4064 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
4065 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
4066 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
4067 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
4068 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
4069 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
4070 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
4071
4072 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
4073 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
4074 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
4075 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
4076 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
4077 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
4078
4079 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
4080 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
4081 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
4082
4083       </div>
4084       <div class="tags">
4085
4086
4087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4088
4089
4090       </div>
4091     </div>
4092     <div class="padding"></div>
4093
4094     <div class="entry">
4095       <div class="title">
4096         <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>
4097       </div>
4098       <div class="date">
4099          2nd February 2013
4100       </div>
4101       <div class="body">
4102         <p>My
4103 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4104 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4105 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4106 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4107 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4108 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4109 version too.</p>
4110
4111 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4112 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4113 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4114 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4115 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4116 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4117 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4118 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4119
4120 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4121 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4122 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4123 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4124 it. :)</p>
4125
4126 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4127 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4128 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4129
4130       </div>
4131       <div class="tags">
4132
4133
4134         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>.
4135
4136
4137       </div>
4138     </div>
4139     <div class="padding"></div>
4140
4141     <div class="entry">
4142       <div class="title">
4143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4144       </div>
4145       <div class="date">
4146         22nd January 2013
4147       </div>
4148       <div class="body">
4149         <p>Yesterday, I
4150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4151 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4152 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4153 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4154 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4155 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4156 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4157 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4158 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4159 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4160 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4161 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4162 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4163
4164 <pre>
4165 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4166 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4167 </pre>
4168
4169 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4170 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4171 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4172 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4173
4174 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4175 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4176 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4177 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4178 word.</p>
4179
4180 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4181 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4182 process.</p>
4183
4184 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4185 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4186
4187       </div>
4188       <div class="tags">
4189
4190
4191         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>.
4192
4193
4194       </div>
4195     </div>
4196     <div class="padding"></div>
4197
4198     <div class="entry">
4199       <div class="title">
4200         <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>
4201       </div>
4202       <div class="date">
4203         21st January 2013
4204       </div>
4205       <div class="body">
4206         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4208 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4209 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4210 it, fetch the
4211 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4212 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4213 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4214 autostart script.</p>
4215
4216 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4217
4218 <ul>
4219
4220 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4221 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4222
4223 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4224 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4225 initially did.</li>
4226
4227 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4228 the APT database, a database
4229 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4230 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4231
4232 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4233 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4234 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4235 package or packages.</li>
4236
4237 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4238 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4239
4240 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4241 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4242
4243 </ul>
4244
4245 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4246 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4247 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4248 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4249
4250 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4251 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4252 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4253 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4254 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4255
4256 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4257 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4258 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4259 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4260 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4261 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4262 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4263 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4264
4265 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4266 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4267 '<tt>svn checkout
4268 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4269 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4270 devscripts package.</p>
4271
4272 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4273 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4274 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4275 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4276 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4277
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="tags">
4280
4281
4282         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>.
4283
4284
4285       </div>
4286     </div>
4287     <div class="padding"></div>
4288
4289     <div class="entry">
4290       <div class="title">
4291         <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>
4292       </div>
4293       <div class="date">
4294         19th January 2013
4295       </div>
4296       <div class="body">
4297         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4298 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4299 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4300 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4301 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4302 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4303 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4304 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4305 not a durable solution.
4306
4307 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4308 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4309
4310 <ul>
4311
4312 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4313   than A4).</li>
4314 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4315 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4316 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4317 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4318 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4319 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4320 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4321 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4322 size).</li>
4323 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4324   X.org packages.</li>
4325 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4326   the time).
4327
4328 </ul>
4329
4330 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4331 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4332 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4333 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4334 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4335 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4336 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4337 still be useful.</p>
4338
4339 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4340 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4341 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4342 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4343 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4344 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4345
4346       </div>
4347       <div class="tags">
4348
4349
4350         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>.
4351
4352
4353       </div>
4354     </div>
4355     <div class="padding"></div>
4356
4357     <div class="entry">
4358       <div class="title">
4359         <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>
4360       </div>
4361       <div class="date">
4362         18th January 2013
4363       </div>
4364       <div class="body">
4365         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4366 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4367 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4368 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4369 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4370 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4371 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4372
4373 <pre>
4374 #!/usr/bin/python
4375 import sys
4376 import apt
4377 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4378     cache = apt.Cache()
4379     cache.open(None)
4380     thepkgs = []
4381     for pkg in cache:
4382         version = pkg.candidate
4383         if version is None:
4384             version = pkg.installed
4385         if version is None:
4386             continue
4387         record = version.record
4388         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4389             continue
4390         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4391         for t in mime_types:
4392             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4393             if t == mimetype:
4394                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4395     return thepkgs
4396 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4397 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4398     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4399 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4400 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4401     print "  %s" %pkg
4402 </pre>
4403
4404 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4405
4406 <pre>
4407 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4408 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4409   gecko-mediaplayer
4410 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4411 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4412   browser-plugin-gnash
4413 %
4414 </pre>
4415
4416 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4417 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4418 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4419 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4420
4421 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4422 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4423 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4424 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4425 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4426 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4427
4428       </div>
4429       <div class="tags">
4430
4431
4432         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>.
4433
4434
4435       </div>
4436     </div>
4437     <div class="padding"></div>
4438
4439     <div class="entry">
4440       <div class="title">
4441         <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>
4442       </div>
4443       <div class="date">
4444         16th January 2013
4445       </div>
4446       <div class="body">
4447         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4448 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4449 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4450 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4451 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4452 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4453 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4454 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4455
4456 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4457 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4458 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4459 can be found on the
4460 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4461 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4462 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4463 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4464 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4465
4466 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4467
4468 <pre>
4469   count MIME type
4470   ----- -----------------------
4471      32 text/plain
4472      30 audio/mpeg
4473      29 image/png
4474      28 image/jpeg
4475      27 application/ogg
4476      26 audio/x-mp3
4477      25 image/tiff
4478      25 image/gif
4479      22 image/bmp
4480      22 audio/x-wav
4481      20 audio/x-flac
4482      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4483      18 video/x-ms-asf
4484      18 audio/x-musepack
4485      18 audio/x-mpeg
4486      18 application/x-ogg
4487      17 video/mpeg
4488      17 audio/x-scpls
4489      17 audio/ogg
4490      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4491 </pre>
4492
4493 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4494
4495 <pre>
4496   count MIME type
4497   ----- -----------------------
4498      33 text/plain
4499      32 image/png
4500      32 image/jpeg
4501      29 audio/mpeg
4502      27 image/gif
4503      26 image/tiff
4504      26 application/ogg
4505      25 audio/x-mp3
4506      22 image/bmp
4507      21 audio/x-wav
4508      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4509      19 audio/x-mpeg
4510      18 video/mpeg
4511      18 audio/x-scpls
4512      18 audio/x-flac
4513      18 application/x-ogg
4514      17 video/x-ms-asf
4515      17 text/html
4516      17 audio/x-musepack
4517      16 image/x-xbitmap
4518 </pre>
4519
4520 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4521
4522 <pre>
4523   count MIME type
4524   ----- -----------------------
4525      31 text/plain
4526      31 image/png
4527      31 image/jpeg
4528      29 audio/mpeg
4529      28 application/ogg
4530      27 image/gif
4531      26 image/tiff
4532      26 audio/x-mp3
4533      23 audio/x-wav
4534      22 image/bmp
4535      21 audio/x-flac
4536      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4537      19 audio/x-mpeg
4538      18 video/x-ms-asf
4539      18 video/mpeg
4540      18 audio/x-scpls
4541      18 application/x-ogg
4542      17 audio/x-musepack
4543      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4544      16 video/x-msvideo
4545 </pre>
4546
4547 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4548 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4549 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4550 issues.</p>
4551
4552 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4553 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4554
4555       </div>
4556       <div class="tags">
4557
4558
4559         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>.
4560
4561
4562       </div>
4563     </div>
4564     <div class="padding"></div>
4565
4566     <div class="entry">
4567       <div class="title">
4568         <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>
4569       </div>
4570       <div class="date">
4571         15th January 2013
4572       </div>
4573       <div class="body">
4574         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4576 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4577 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4578 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4579 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4580 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4581 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4582 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4583 packages.</p>
4584
4585 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4586 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4587 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4588 modalias.</p>
4589
4590 <p><blockquote>
4591 Package: package-name
4592 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4593 </blockquote></p>
4594
4595 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4596 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4597
4598 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4599 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4600
4601 <p><blockquote>
4602 Package: cheese
4603 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4604 </blockquote></p>
4605
4606 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4607 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4608
4609 <p><blockquote>
4610 Package: pcmciautils
4611 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4612 </blockquote></p>
4613
4614 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4615 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4616
4617 <p><blockquote>
4618 Package: colorhug-client
4619 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4620 </blockquote></p>
4621
4622 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4623 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4624 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4625
4626 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4627 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4628 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4629 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4630 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4631 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4632 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4633 Raring.</p>
4634
4635 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4636 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4637 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4638 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4639 try the
4640 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4641 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4642 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4643 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4644
4645 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4646 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4647
4648 <p><blockquote>
4649 % ./hw-support-lookup
4650 <br>yubikey-personalization
4651 <br>%
4652 </blockquote></p>
4653
4654 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4655 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4656
4657 <p><blockquote>
4658 % ./hw-support-lookup
4659 <br>pcmciautils
4660 <br>%
4661 </blockquote></p>
4662
4663 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4664 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4665 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4666
4667 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4668 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4669 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4670 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4671 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4672 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4673 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4674 see if it work.</p>
4675
4676 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4677 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4678 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4679 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4680
4681       </div>
4682       <div class="tags">
4683
4684
4685         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>.
4686
4687
4688       </div>
4689     </div>
4690     <div class="padding"></div>
4691
4692     <div class="entry">
4693       <div class="title">
4694         <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>
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="date">
4697         14th January 2013
4698       </div>
4699       <div class="body">
4700         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4701 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4702 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4703 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4704 in
4705 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4706 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4707
4708 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4709
4710 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4711 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4712 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4713 &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;,
4714 &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
4715 &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;.
4716
4717 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4718 this shell script:</p>
4719
4720 <pre>
4721 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4722 </pre>
4723
4724 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4725 using modinfo:</p>
4726
4727 <pre>
4728 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4729 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4730 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4731 %
4732 </pre>
4733
4734 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4735
4736 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4737 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4738
4739 <p><blockquote>
4740 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4741 </blockquote></p>
4742
4743 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4744
4745 <pre>
4746  v   00008086  (vendor)
4747  d   00002770  (device)
4748  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4749  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4750  bc  06        (bus class)
4751  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4752  i   00        (interface)
4753 </pre>
4754
4755 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4756 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4757 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4758 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4759
4760 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4761 means.</p>
4762
4763 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4764
4765 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4766 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4767
4768 <p><blockquote>
4769 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4770 </blockquote></p>
4771
4772 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4773
4774 <pre>
4775  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4776  p    0001  (device product)
4777  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4778  dc     09  (device class)
4779  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4780  dp     00  (device protocol)
4781  ic     09  (interface class)
4782  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4783  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4784 </pre>
4785
4786 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4787 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4788 these alias entries show up:</p>
4789
4790 <p><blockquote>
4791 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4792 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4793 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4794 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4795 </blockquote></p>
4796
4797 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4798 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4799 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4800
4801 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4802
4803 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4804 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4805
4806 <p><blockquote>
4807 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4808 </blockquote></p>
4809
4810 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4811
4812 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4813
4814 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4815 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4816 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4817
4818 <p><blockquote>
4819 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4820 </blockquote></p>
4821
4822 <p>The values present are</p>
4823
4824 <pre>
4825  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4826  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4827  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4828  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4829  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4830  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4831  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4832  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4833  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4834  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4835  ct   10             (chassis type)
4836  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4837 </pre>
4838
4839 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4840 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4841
4842 <pre>
4843   3 Desktop
4844   4 Low Profile Desktop
4845   5 Pizza Box
4846   6 Mini Tower
4847   7 Tower
4848   8 Portable
4849   9 Laptop
4850  10 Notebook
4851  11 Hand Held
4852  12 Docking Station
4853  13 All In One
4854  14 Sub Notebook
4855  15 Space-saving
4856  16 Lunch Box
4857  17 Main Server Chassis
4858  18 Expansion Chassis
4859  19 Sub Chassis
4860  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4861  21 Peripheral Chassis
4862  22 RAID Chassis
4863  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4864  24 Sealed-case PC
4865  25 Multi-system
4866  26 CompactPCI
4867  27 AdvancedTCA
4868  28 Blade
4869  29 Blade Enclosing
4870 </pre>
4871
4872 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4873 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4874 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4875
4876 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4877
4878 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4879 test machine:</p>
4880
4881 <p><blockquote>
4882 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4883 </blockquote></p>
4884
4885 <p>The values present are</p>
4886
4887 <pre>
4888   ty  01  (type)
4889   pr  00  (prototype)
4890   id  00  (id)
4891   ex  00  (extra)
4892 </pre>
4893
4894 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4895 the valid values are.</p>
4896
4897 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4898
4899 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4900 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4901 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4902 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4903 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4904 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4905 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4906
4907 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4908
4909 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4910 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4911
4912 <pre>
4913   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4914     echo "$id" ; \
4915     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4916   done
4917 </pre>
4918
4919 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4920 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4921
4922 <pre>
4923   acpi:ACPI0003:
4924     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4925   acpi:device:
4926   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4927   acpi:IBM0068:
4928     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4929     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4930     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4931     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4932   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4933     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4934     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4935     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4936   [...]
4937 </pre>
4938
4939 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4940 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4941 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4942 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4943
4944 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
4945 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
4946 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
4947
4948       </div>
4949       <div class="tags">
4950
4951
4952         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>.
4953
4954
4955       </div>
4956     </div>
4957     <div class="padding"></div>
4958
4959     <div class="entry">
4960       <div class="title">
4961         <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>
4962       </div>
4963       <div class="date">
4964         10th January 2013
4965       </div>
4966       <div class="body">
4967         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4968 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4969 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4970 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
4971 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4972 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
4973 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4974 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4975 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4976 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
4977 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4978 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4979 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4980 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4981 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4982 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
4983 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
4984 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
4985
4986       </div>
4987       <div class="tags">
4988
4989
4990         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>.
4991
4992
4993       </div>
4994     </div>
4995     <div class="padding"></div>
4996
4997     <div class="entry">
4998       <div class="title">
4999         <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>
5000       </div>
5001       <div class="date">
5002          9th January 2013
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="body">
5005         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5006 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5007 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5008 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5009 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5010 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5011 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5012 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5013 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5014 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5015 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5016
5017 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5018 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5019 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5020 simple:
5021
5022 <ul>
5023
5024 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5025   starting when a user log in.</li>
5026
5027 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5028   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5029
5030 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5031   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5032   packages.</li>
5033
5034 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5035   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5036
5037 </ul>
5038
5039 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5040 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5041 discover database to find packages and
5042 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5043 packages.</p>
5044
5045 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5046 draft package is now checked into
5047 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5048 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5049 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5050 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5051 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5052 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5053 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5054 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5055 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5056 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5057 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5058 because of the freeze).</p>
5059
5060 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5061 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5062 inserted):</p>
5063
5064 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5065
5066 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5067 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5068 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5069
5070 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5071 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5072 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5073 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5074 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5075 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5076 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5077
5078 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5079 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5080 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5081 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5082 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5083 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5084 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5085 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5086 not be installed?</p>
5087
5088 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5089 please send me an email. :)</p>
5090
5091       </div>
5092       <div class="tags">
5093
5094
5095         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>.
5096
5097
5098       </div>
5099     </div>
5100     <div class="padding"></div>
5101
5102     <div class="entry">
5103       <div class="title">
5104         <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>
5105       </div>
5106       <div class="date">
5107          2nd January 2013
5108       </div>
5109       <div class="body">
5110         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5111 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5112 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5113 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5114 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5115 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5116 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5117 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5118 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5119 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5120
5121 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5122 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5123 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5124
5125       </div>
5126       <div class="tags">
5127
5128
5129         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>.
5130
5131
5132       </div>
5133     </div>
5134     <div class="padding"></div>
5135
5136     <div class="entry">
5137       <div class="title">
5138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5139       </div>
5140       <div class="date">
5141         28th December 2012
5142       </div>
5143       <div class="body">
5144         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
5145 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5146 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
5147 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
5148 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
5149 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
5150 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
5151 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
5152 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
5153 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
5154 followed by many others. :)</p>
5155
5156 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
5157 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
5158 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
5159 you want to donate to the project.</p>
5160
5161       </div>
5162       <div class="tags">
5163
5164
5165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5166
5167
5168       </div>
5169     </div>
5170     <div class="padding"></div>
5171
5172     <div class="entry">
5173       <div class="title">
5174         <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>
5175       </div>
5176       <div class="date">
5177         25th December 2012
5178       </div>
5179       <div class="body">
5180         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5181 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5182
5183 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5184 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5185 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5186 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5187 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5188 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5189 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5190 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5191 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5192 name.</p>
5193
5194 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5195 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5196 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5197
5198 <blockquote><pre>
5199 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5200 cd bitcoin
5201 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5202 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5203 </pre></blockquote>
5204
5205 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5206 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5207 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5208 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5209 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5210 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5211 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5212 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5213 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5214
5215 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5216 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5217 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5218
5219       </div>
5220       <div class="tags">
5221
5222
5223         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>.
5224
5225
5226       </div>
5227     </div>
5228     <div class="padding"></div>
5229
5230     <div class="entry">
5231       <div class="title">
5232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5233       </div>
5234       <div class="date">
5235         21st December 2012
5236       </div>
5237       <div class="body">
5238         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5239 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5240 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5241 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5242 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5243 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5244 is now maintained by a
5245 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5246 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5247 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5248 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5249 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5250 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5251 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5252 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5253 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5254 Corallo in a
5255 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5256 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5257 Debian package.</p>
5258
5259 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5260 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5261 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5262 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5263 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5264 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5265 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5266 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5267 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5268 new version to unstable.
5269
5270 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5271 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5272 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5273 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5274 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5275 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5276 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5277 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5278 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5279 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5280 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5281 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5282 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5283 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5284 have not tested them.</p>
5285
5286 <p>My
5287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5288 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5289 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5290 years ago, as can be
5291 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5292 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5293 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5294 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5295 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5296 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5297 the same address as last time,
5298 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5299
5300       </div>
5301       <div class="tags">
5302
5303
5304         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>.
5305
5306
5307       </div>
5308     </div>
5309     <div class="padding"></div>
5310
5311     <div class="entry">
5312       <div class="title">
5313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
5314       </div>
5315       <div class="date">
5316         18th December 2012
5317       </div>
5318       <div class="body">
5319         <p>A few days ago I came across
5320 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
5321 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
5322 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
5323 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
5324 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
5325 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
5326 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
5327 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
5328 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
5329
5330 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
5331 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
5332 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
5333 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
5334
5335 <blockquote><pre>
5336 2004-05-27 Book Store
5337       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
5338       Liabilities:Visa
5339 </pre></blockquote>
5340
5341 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
5342 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
5343 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
5344 Spang</a>,
5345 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
5346 Keen</a>,
5347 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
5348 Cantino</a> and
5349 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
5350 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
5351 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
5352 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
5353 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
5354
5355 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
5356 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
5357 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
5358 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
5359 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
5360
5361 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
5362 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
5363 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
5364 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
5365 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
5366 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
5367 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
5368 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
5369 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
5370
5371       </div>
5372       <div class="tags">
5373
5374
5375         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5376
5377
5378       </div>
5379     </div>
5380     <div class="padding"></div>
5381
5382     <div class="entry">
5383       <div class="title">
5384         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
5385       </div>
5386       <div class="date">
5387          6th December 2012
5388       </div>
5389       <div class="body">
5390         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
5391 Oslo</a>, we use the
5392 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
5393 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
5394 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
5395 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
5396 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
5397 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
5398 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
5399 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
5400 Python.</p>
5401
5402 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
5403 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
5404 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
5405 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
5406 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
5407 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
5408
5409 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
5410 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
5411 user currently logged in:</p>
5412
5413 <blockquote><pre>
5414 #!/usr/bin/env python
5415 import getpass
5416 import xmlrpclib
5417 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
5418 username = getpass.getuser()
5419 password = getpass.getpass()
5420 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
5421 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
5422 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
5423 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
5424 result = server.logout(sessionid)
5425 print result
5426 </pre></blockquote>
5427
5428 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
5429 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
5430
5431       </div>
5432       <div class="tags">
5433
5434
5435         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
5436
5437
5438       </div>
5439     </div>
5440     <div class="padding"></div>
5441
5442     <div class="entry">
5443       <div class="title">
5444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
5445       </div>
5446       <div class="date">
5447         17th November 2012
5448       </div>
5449       <div class="body">
5450         <p>While working on a
5451 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
5452 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
5453 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
5454 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
5455 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
5456 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
5457
5458 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
5459 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
5460 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
5461 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
5462 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
5463 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
5464 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
5465 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
5466 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
5467 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
5468 arguments.</p>
5469
5470 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
5471 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
5472 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
5473 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
5474 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
5475 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
5476 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
5477 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
5478
5479 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
5480 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
5481 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
5482 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
5483 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
5484 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
5485 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
5486 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
5487 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
5488 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
5489 correct right holder.</p>
5490
5491 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
5492 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
5493 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
5494 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
5495 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
5496 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
5497 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
5498 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
5499 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
5500 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
5501 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
5502 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
5503 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
5504 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
5505
5506 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
5507 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
5508 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
5509
5510 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
5511 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
5512
5513       </div>
5514       <div class="tags">
5515
5516
5517         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5518
5519
5520       </div>
5521     </div>
5522     <div class="padding"></div>
5523
5524     <div class="entry">
5525       <div class="title">
5526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
5527       </div>
5528       <div class="date">
5529         14th November 2012
5530       </div>
5531       <div class="body">
5532         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
5533 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5534 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
5535 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
5536 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
5537 the people behind the German
5538 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
5539 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
5540 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
5541
5542 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5543
5544 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
5545 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
5546 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
5547
5548 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
5549 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
5550 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
5551 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
5552 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
5553 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
5554
5555 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
5556 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
5557 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
5558 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
5559 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
5560 relationship management and the communication processes in the
5561 project.</p>
5562
5563 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
5564 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
5565 and a yoga teacher.</p>
5566
5567 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5568 project?</strong></p>
5569
5570 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
5571
5572 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
5573 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
5574 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
5575 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
5576 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
5577 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
5578 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
5579 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
5580 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
5581 parents.</p>
5582
5583 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
5584 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
5585 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
5586 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
5587 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
5588 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
5589 Germany.</p>
5590
5591 <p>For information about our school project you can read
5592 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
5593 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
5594
5595 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5596 Edu?</strong></p>
5597
5598 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
5599 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
5600
5601 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
5602 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
5603 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
5604 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
5605 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
5606 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
5607 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
5608 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
5609 teachers, parents...</p>
5610
5611 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5612 Edu?</strong></p>
5613
5614 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
5615 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5616
5617 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
5618 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
5619 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
5620 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
5621 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5622
5623 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
5624 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
5625 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
5626 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
5627 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
5628 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
5629 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5630
5631 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5632
5633 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
5634 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
5635 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
5636 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
5637
5638 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5639 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5640
5641 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
5642 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
5643 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
5644 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
5645 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
5646
5647 <ul>
5648
5649 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
5650 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
5651 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
5652
5653 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
5654 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
5655 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
5656 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
5657 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
5658 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
5659 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
5660
5661 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
5662 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
5663 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
5664 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
5665
5666 </ul>
5667
5668       </div>
5669       <div class="tags">
5670
5671
5672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5673
5674
5675       </div>
5676     </div>
5677     <div class="padding"></div>
5678
5679     <div class="entry">
5680       <div class="title">
5681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
5682       </div>
5683       <div class="date">
5684          4th November 2012
5685       </div>
5686       <div class="body">
5687         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
5688 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
5689 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
5690 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
5691 see how a member of the bitcoin community
5692 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
5693 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
5694 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
5695 competition.  My thoughts go to the
5696 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
5697 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
5698 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
5699 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
5700 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
5701
5702 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
5703 that the community already seem to have
5704 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
5705 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
5706 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
5707 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
5708 wealth is available.</p>
5709
5710       </div>
5711       <div class="tags">
5712
5713
5714         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5715
5716
5717       </div>
5718     </div>
5719     <div class="padding"></div>
5720
5721     <div class="entry">
5722       <div class="title">
5723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
5724       </div>
5725       <div class="date">
5726         26th October 2012
5727       </div>
5728       <div class="body">
5729         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
5730 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
5731 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
5732 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
5733 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
5734 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
5735 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
5736 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
5737 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
5738 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
5739 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
5740 it every time.</p>
5741
5742 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
5743 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
5744 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
5745 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
5746 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
5747 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
5748 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
5749 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
5750 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
5751 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
5752 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
5753 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
5754
5755 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
5756 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
5757 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
5758 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
5759 article: First the unplanned outage:
5760
5761 <blockquote><pre>
5762 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
5763 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
5764 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
5765 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
5766 Duration:    40 minutes
5767 Scope:       Exchange 2003
5768 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
5769              a cluster failover.
5770
5771 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
5772              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
5773 Technician:  [xxx]
5774 </pre></blockquote>
5775
5776 Next the planned outage:
5777
5778 <blockquote><pre>
5779 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
5780 Severity:    Major (Planned)
5781 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
5782 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
5783 Duration:    10 hours
5784 Scope:       H2 Transport
5785 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
5786              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
5787              4510s.
5788 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
5789              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
5790              connectivity.
5791 Technician:  [xxx]
5792 </pre></blockquote>
5793
5794 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
5795 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
5796 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
5797 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
5798 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
5799 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
5800 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
5801
5802 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
5803 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
5804 university too.  We do register
5805 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
5806 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
5807 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
5808 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
5809 for other sites to consider too?</p>
5810
5811       </div>
5812       <div class="tags">
5813
5814
5815         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
5816
5817
5818       </div>
5819     </div>
5820     <div class="padding"></div>
5821
5822     <div class="entry">
5823       <div class="title">
5824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
5825       </div>
5826       <div class="date">
5827         22nd October 2012
5828       </div>
5829       <div class="body">
5830         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
5831 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
5832 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
5833 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
5834 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
5835 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
5836 background information is available in Norwegian from
5837 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
5838 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
5839 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
5840 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
5841 willing to
5842 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
5843 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
5844 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
5845 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
5846 sounded like
5847 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
5848 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
5849 later.</p>
5850
5851 <p>And thought this action is
5852 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
5853 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
5854 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
5855 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
5856 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
5857 rights.</p>
5858
5859 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
5860 unacceptable terms.  For example
5861 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
5862 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
5863 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
5864 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
5865 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
5866
5867 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
5868 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
5869 restored the account of the user, as reported by
5870 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
5871 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
5872 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
5873 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
5874 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
5875 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
5876 reading two opinions from
5877 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
5878 Phipps</a> and
5879 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
5880 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
5881 details about the original story.</p>
5882
5883       </div>
5884       <div class="tags">
5885
5886
5887         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
5888
5889
5890       </div>
5891     </div>
5892     <div class="padding"></div>
5893
5894     <div class="entry">
5895       <div class="title">
5896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
5897       </div>
5898       <div class="date">
5899         18th October 2012
5900       </div>
5901       <div class="body">
5902         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
5903 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
5904 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
5905 across a marvellous drawing by
5906 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
5907 visualising some of what is going on.
5908
5909 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
5910 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
5911
5912 <blockquote>
5913 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
5914 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
5915 </blockquote>
5916
5917 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
5918 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
5919 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
5920 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
5921 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
5922 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
5923
5924       </div>
5925       <div class="tags">
5926
5927
5928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5929
5930
5931       </div>
5932     </div>
5933     <div class="padding"></div>
5934
5935     <div class="entry">
5936       <div class="title">
5937         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
5938       </div>
5939       <div class="date">
5940         12th October 2012
5941       </div>
5942       <div class="body">
5943         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
5944 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
5945 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
5946 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
5947 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
5948 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
5949 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
5950 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
5951 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
5952 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
5953 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
5954 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
5955 matter".</p>
5956
5957 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
5958 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
5959 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
5960 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
5961 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
5962 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
5963 to argue its side.</p>
5964
5965 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
5966 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
5967 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
5968 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
5969
5970 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
5971 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
5972 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
5973
5974       </div>
5975       <div class="tags">
5976
5977
5978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
5979
5980
5981       </div>
5982     </div>
5983     <div class="padding"></div>
5984
5985     <div class="entry">
5986       <div class="title">
5987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
5988       </div>
5989       <div class="date">
5990          3rd October 2012
5991       </div>
5992       <div class="body">
5993         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
5994 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
5995 the computer science book collection available in his local
5996 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
5997 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
5998 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
5999 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
6000 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
6001 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
6002 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
6003 recently published books.</p>
6004
6005 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
6006 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
6007 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
6008 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
6009 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
6010 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
6011 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
6012 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
6013 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
6014 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
6015 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
6016 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
6017 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
6018 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
6019 for the library that evening.</p>
6020
6021 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
6022 going to know that for example
6023 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
6024 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
6025 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
6026 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
6027 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
6028 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
6029 book right away.</p>
6030
6031       </div>
6032       <div class="tags">
6033
6034
6035         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6036
6037
6038       </div>
6039     </div>
6040     <div class="padding"></div>
6041
6042     <div class="entry">
6043       <div class="title">
6044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
6045       </div>
6046       <div class="date">
6047         23rd September 2012
6048       </div>
6049       <div class="body">
6050         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
6051 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
6052 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6053 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
6054 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
6055 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
6056
6057 When I started, I
6058 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6059 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
6060 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
6061 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
6062 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
6063 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
6064 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
6065
6066 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6067
6068 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
6069 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
6070 the project files currently available from
6071 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6072
6073 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6074 the updated
6075 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6076 and
6077 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6078 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6079 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6080 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6081
6082       </div>
6083       <div class="tags">
6084
6085
6086         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6087
6088
6089       </div>
6090     </div>
6091     <div class="padding"></div>
6092
6093     <div class="entry">
6094       <div class="title">
6095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
6096       </div>
6097       <div class="date">
6098         17th September 2012
6099       </div>
6100       <div class="body">
6101         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
6102 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6103 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
6104 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
6105 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
6106 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
6107 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
6108
6109 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6110
6111 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
6112 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
6113 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
6114 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
6115 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
6116 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
6117 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
6118 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
6119 training is anyway very important</p>
6120
6121 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
6122 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
6123 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
6124 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
6125 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
6126
6127 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6128 project?</strong></p>
6129
6130 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
6131 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
6132 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
6133 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
6134 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
6135 hole.</p>
6136
6137 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6138 Edu?</strong></p>
6139
6140 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
6141 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
6142 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
6143 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
6144 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
6145 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
6146 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
6147 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
6148 hassle.</p>
6149
6150 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6151 Edu?</strong></p>
6152
6153 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
6154 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
6155 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
6156 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
6157 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
6158 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
6159 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
6160 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
6161
6162 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6163
6164 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
6165 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
6166 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
6167 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
6168 has the same...</p>
6169
6170 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
6171 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
6172 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
6173 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
6174
6175 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6176 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6177
6178 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
6179 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
6180 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
6181
6182 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
6183 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
6184 don't.</p>
6185
6186 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
6187 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
6188 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
6189 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
6190 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
6191 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
6192 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
6193
6194       </div>
6195       <div class="tags">
6196
6197
6198         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6199
6200
6201       </div>
6202     </div>
6203     <div class="padding"></div>
6204
6205     <div class="entry">
6206       <div class="title">
6207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
6208       </div>
6209       <div class="date">
6210         15th September 2012
6211       </div>
6212       <div class="body">
6213         <p>After the
6214 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
6215 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
6216 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
6217 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
6218 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
6219 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
6220 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
6221 was
6222 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
6223 formal working group should be formed.</p>
6224
6225 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
6226 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
6227 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
6228 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
6229 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
6230 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
6231 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
6232 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
6233
6234 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
6235 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
6236 IETF.</p>
6237
6238       </div>
6239       <div class="tags">
6240
6241
6242         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6243
6244
6245       </div>
6246     </div>
6247     <div class="padding"></div>
6248
6249     <div class="entry">
6250       <div class="title">
6251         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
6252       </div>
6253       <div class="date">
6254         12th September 2012
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="body">
6257         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
6258 publication of of
6259 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
6260 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
6261 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
6262 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
6263 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
6264 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
6265 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
6266 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
6267 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
6268 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
6269
6270 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
6271 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
6272 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
6273 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
6274
6275 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
6276 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
6277
6278       </div>
6279       <div class="tags">
6280
6281
6282         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6283
6284
6285       </div>
6286     </div>
6287     <div class="padding"></div>
6288
6289     <div class="entry">
6290       <div class="title">
6291         <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>
6292       </div>
6293       <div class="date">
6294          7th September 2012
6295       </div>
6296       <div class="body">
6297         <p>As I
6298 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
6299 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
6300 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
6301 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
6302 repository for the project</a>.</p>
6303
6304 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6305 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6306 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6307 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
6308
6309 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6310 PostScript formats at
6311 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6312 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
6313
6314       </div>
6315       <div class="tags">
6316
6317
6318         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>.
6319
6320
6321       </div>
6322     </div>
6323     <div class="padding"></div>
6324
6325     <div class="entry">
6326       <div class="title">
6327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
6328       </div>
6329       <div class="date">
6330         23rd August 2012
6331       </div>
6332       <div class="body">
6333         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
6334 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
6335 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
6336 revisit the great site
6337 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
6338 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
6339 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
6340
6341       </div>
6342       <div class="tags">
6343
6344
6345         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6346
6347
6348       </div>
6349     </div>
6350     <div class="padding"></div>
6351
6352     <div class="entry">
6353       <div class="title">
6354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
6355       </div>
6356       <div class="date">
6357         17th August 2012
6358       </div>
6359       <div class="body">
6360         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
6361 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6362 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6363 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
6364 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
6365 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
6366 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
6367 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
6368 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
6369 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
6370 summer I
6371 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6372 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
6373 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
6374
6375 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
6376 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
6377 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
6378 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
6379 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
6380 progress:</p>
6381
6382 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6383
6384 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
6385 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
6386 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
6387 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
6388 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
6389 english version of the docbook source.</p>
6390
6391 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6392 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6393 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6394 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6395 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6396 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
6397 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
6398 project files currently available from <a
6399 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6400
6401 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6402 the updated
6403 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6404 and
6405 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6406 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6407 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6408 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6409
6410       </div>
6411       <div class="tags">
6412
6413
6414         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6415
6416
6417       </div>
6418     </div>
6419     <div class="padding"></div>
6420
6421     <div class="entry">
6422       <div class="title">
6423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
6424       </div>
6425       <div class="date">
6426         10th August 2012
6427       </div>
6428       <div class="body">
6429         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
6430 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
6431 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
6432 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
6433 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
6434 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
6435 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
6436 case for the language
6437 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
6438 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
6439
6440 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
6441 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
6442 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
6443 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
6444 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
6445
6446 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
6447 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
6448 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
6449 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
6450 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
6451 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
6452 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
6453 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
6454 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
6455 alias for 'nb'.</p>
6456
6457 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
6458 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
6459 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
6460 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
6461 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
6462 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
6463 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
6464 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
6465 at the same time. :(</p>
6466
6467 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
6468 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
6469 processors. :(</p>
6470
6471 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
6472
6473       </div>
6474       <div class="tags">
6475
6476
6477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6478
6479
6480       </div>
6481     </div>
6482     <div class="padding"></div>
6483
6484     <div class="entry">
6485       <div class="title">
6486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
6487       </div>
6488       <div class="date">
6489         31st July 2012
6490       </div>
6491       <div class="body">
6492         <p>I tried to send this text to the
6493 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
6494 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
6495 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
6496 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
6497 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
6498 out.</p>
6499
6500 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
6501 learning curve at the moment.</p>
6502
6503 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
6504 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
6505 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
6506 available from
6507 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
6508 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
6509 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
6510 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
6511 Squeeze.</p>
6512
6513 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
6514 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
6515 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
6516 problems.</p>
6517
6518 <ul>
6519
6520 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
6521    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
6522    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
6523    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
6524    index references spanning several pages (See
6525    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
6526    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
6527    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
6528
6529 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
6530    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
6531    #683163</a>).</li>
6532
6533 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
6534    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
6535    footnote and text body, see
6536    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
6537    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
6538    refs listed are not right).</li>
6539
6540 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
6541
6542 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
6543    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
6544
6545 </ul>
6546
6547 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
6548 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
6549 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
6550
6551 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
6552
6553       </div>
6554       <div class="tags">
6555
6556
6557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
6558
6559
6560       </div>
6561     </div>
6562     <div class="padding"></div>
6563
6564     <div class="entry">
6565       <div class="title">
6566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
6567       </div>
6568       <div class="date">
6569         21st July 2012
6570       </div>
6571       <div class="body">
6572         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
6573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
6574 norwegian version</a> of the book
6575 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6576 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
6577 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
6578 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
6579 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6580
6581 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
6582 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
6583 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
6584 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
6585 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
6586 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
6587 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
6588 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
6589 print. :)</p>
6590
6591 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
6592 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
6593 language.</p>
6594
6595       </div>
6596       <div class="tags">
6597
6598
6599         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6600
6601
6602       </div>
6603     </div>
6604     <div class="padding"></div>
6605
6606     <div class="entry">
6607       <div class="title">
6608         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
6609       </div>
6610       <div class="date">
6611         16th July 2012
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="body">
6614         <p>I am currently working on a
6615 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
6616 to translate</a> the book
6617 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
6618 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
6619 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
6620 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
6621 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
6622 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
6623 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6624
6625 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
6626 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
6627 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
6628 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
6629 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
6630 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
6631 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
6632 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
6633 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
6634
6635       </div>
6636       <div class="tags">
6637
6638
6639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6640
6641
6642       </div>
6643     </div>
6644     <div class="padding"></div>
6645
6646     <div class="entry">
6647       <div class="title">
6648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
6649       </div>
6650       <div class="date">
6651          9th July 2012
6652       </div>
6653       <div class="body">
6654         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6655 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
6656 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
6657 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
6658 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
6659 to adjust and scale the just released
6660 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
6661 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
6662 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
6663
6664 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6665
6666 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
6667 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
6668 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
6669 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
6670 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
6671 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
6672 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
6673 perspective when working with IT.</p>
6674
6675 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6676 project?</strong></p>
6677
6678 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
6679 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
6680 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
6681 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
6682 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
6683 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
6684
6685 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6686 Edu?</strong></p>
6687
6688 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
6689 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
6690 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
6691 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
6692 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
6693 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
6694 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
6695 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
6696 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
6697 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
6698 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
6699 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
6700 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
6701 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
6702 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
6703 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
6704 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
6705 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
6706 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
6707 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
6708 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
6709 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
6710 quicker to update.
6711
6712 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6713 Edu?</strong></p>
6714
6715 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
6716 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
6717 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
6718 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
6719 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
6720 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
6721
6722 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
6723 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
6724 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
6725 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
6726 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
6727 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
6728 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
6729 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
6730 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
6731 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
6732 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
6733 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
6734 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
6735 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
6736 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
6737
6738 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
6739 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
6740 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
6741 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
6742 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
6743 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
6744 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
6745 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
6746
6747 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
6748 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
6749 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
6750 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
6751 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
6752 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
6753 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
6754 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
6755 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
6756 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
6757 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
6758 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
6759 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
6760 sound file.</p>
6761
6762 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
6763 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
6764 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
6765 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
6766 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
6767 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
6768 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
6769 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
6770 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
6771
6772 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6773
6774 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
6775 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
6776 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
6777 )</p>
6778
6779 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6780 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6781
6782 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
6783 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
6784 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
6785 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
6786 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
6787 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
6788 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
6789 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
6790 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
6791 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
6792 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
6793 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
6794 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
6795 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
6796 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
6797
6798 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
6799 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
6800 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
6801 management with Airtime</a>,
6802 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
6803 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
6804 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
6805 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
6806 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
6807
6808       </div>
6809       <div class="tags">
6810
6811
6812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
6813
6814
6815       </div>
6816     </div>
6817     <div class="padding"></div>
6818
6819     <div class="entry">
6820       <div class="title">
6821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
6822       </div>
6823       <div class="date">
6824          8th July 2012
6825       </div>
6826       <div class="body">
6827         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
6828 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
6829 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
6830 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
6831 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
6832 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
6833 Steinberg in his blog post
6834 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
6835 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
6836 spending of your tax money.</p>
6837
6838 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
6839 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
6840 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
6841 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
6842 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
6843 purchases.</p>
6844
6845       </div>
6846       <div class="tags">
6847
6848
6849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6850
6851
6852       </div>
6853     </div>
6854     <div class="padding"></div>
6855
6856     <div class="entry">
6857       <div class="title">
6858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
6859       </div>
6860       <div class="date">
6861          7th July 2012
6862       </div>
6863       <div class="body">
6864         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6865 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
6866 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
6867 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
6868 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
6869 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
6870 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
6871 receive.  The software is
6872
6873 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
6874 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
6875 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
6876 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
6877 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
6878 Windows</a>.</p>
6879
6880 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
6881 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
6882
6883 <p><ul>
6884
6885   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
6886     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
6887
6888   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
6889     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
6890     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
6891     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
6892     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
6893     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
6894     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
6895     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
6896     </li>
6897
6898   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
6899     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
6900
6901   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
6902     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
6903
6904   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
6905     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
6906
6907   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
6908
6909   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
6910     formats </li>
6911
6912   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
6913     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
6914     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
6915     (as separate sets)</li>
6916
6917   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
6918     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
6919     percentage)</li>
6920
6921   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
6922     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
6923     memory):
6924     <ul>
6925       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
6926       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
6927       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
6928       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
6929       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
6930       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
6931       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
6932       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
6933       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
6934       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
6935           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
6936           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
6937           activity)</li>
6938       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
6939       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
6940     </ul></li>
6941
6942   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
6943     <ul>
6944       <li>Break periods</li>
6945       <li>For teacher(s):
6946         <ul>
6947           <li>Not available periods</li>
6948           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
6949           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
6950           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
6951           <li>Min hours daily</li>
6952           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
6953
6954           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
6955             days per week</li>
6956         </ul></li>
6957       <li>For students (sets):
6958         <ul>
6959           <li>Not available periods</li>
6960           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
6961           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
6962           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
6963           <li>Min hours daily</li>
6964           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
6965
6966           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
6967             days per week</li>
6968         </ul></li>
6969       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
6970         <ul>
6971           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
6972           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
6973           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
6974           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
6975           <li>End(s) students day</li>
6976           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
6977           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
6978             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
6979           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
6980           <li>Not overlapping</li>
6981           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
6982           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
6983         </ul></li>
6984     </ul></li>
6985
6986   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
6987     <ul>
6988       <li>Room not available periods</li>
6989       <li>For teacher(s):
6990         <ul>
6991           <li>Home room(s)</li>
6992           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
6993           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
6994         </ul>
6995       </li>
6996
6997       <li>For students (sets):
6998         <ul>
6999           <li>Home room(s)</li>
7000           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
7001           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
7002         </ul>
7003       </li>
7004       <li>Preferred room(s):
7005         <ul>
7006           <li>For a subject</li>
7007           <li>For an activity tag</li>
7008           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
7009           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
7010         </ul>
7011       </li>
7012
7013       <li>For a set of activities:
7014         <ul>
7015           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
7016         </ul>
7017       </li>
7018     </ul>
7019   </li>
7020 </ul></p>
7021
7022 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
7023 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
7024 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
7025 manually, check it out.
7026
7027 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
7028 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
7029 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
7030 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
7031 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
7032 section</a>.</p>
7033
7034       </div>
7035       <div class="tags">
7036
7037
7038         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7039
7040
7041       </div>
7042     </div>
7043     <div class="padding"></div>
7044
7045     <div class="entry">
7046       <div class="title">
7047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
7048       </div>
7049       <div class="date">
7050          3rd July 2012
7051       </div>
7052       <div class="body">
7053         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
7054 project (Norwegian version of
7055 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
7056 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
7057 a problem with the municipalities using
7058 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
7059 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
7060 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
7061 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
7062 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
7063 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
7064 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
7065 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
7066 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
7067 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
7068 the From: header.</p>
7069
7070 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
7071 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
7072 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
7073 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
7074 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
7075 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
7076 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
7077 behaviour.</p>
7078
7079 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
7080 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
7081 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
7082 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
7083 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
7084 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7085 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
7086
7087       </div>
7088       <div class="tags">
7089
7090
7091         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7092
7093
7094       </div>
7095     </div>
7096     <div class="padding"></div>
7097
7098     <div class="entry">
7099       <div class="title">
7100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
7101       </div>
7102       <div class="date">
7103         26th June 2012
7104       </div>
7105       <div class="body">
7106         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
7107 another interview with the people behind
7108 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
7109 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
7110 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
7111 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
7112 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
7113 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7114 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7115
7116 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7117
7118 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
7119 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
7120 ICT in schools</p>
7121
7122 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7123 project?</strong></p>
7124
7125 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
7126 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
7127 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
7128 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
7129
7130 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7131 Edu?</strong></p>
7132
7133 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
7134 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
7135 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
7136 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
7137
7138 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7139 Edu?</strong></p>
7140
7141 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
7142 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
7143 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
7144 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
7145 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
7146 technologies in school.</p>
7147
7148 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7149
7150 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
7151 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
7152 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
7153
7154 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7155 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7156
7157 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
7158 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
7159 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
7160 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
7161
7162 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
7163 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
7164 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
7165
7166 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
7167 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
7168 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
7169 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
7170 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
7171 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
7172 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
7173 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
7174 working there.</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         24th June 2012
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7196 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7197 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7198 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7199 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7200 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7201 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7202 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7203 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7204 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7205 missing in my book.</p>
7206
7207 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7208 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7209 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7210 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7211 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7212 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7213 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7214
7215       </div>
7216       <div class="tags">
7217
7218
7219         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>.
7220
7221
7222       </div>
7223     </div>
7224     <div class="padding"></div>
7225
7226     <div class="entry">
7227       <div class="title">
7228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
7229       </div>
7230       <div class="date">
7231         11th June 2012
7232       </div>
7233       <div class="body">
7234         <p>During my work on
7235 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
7236 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
7237 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
7238 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
7239 explanation.</p>
7240
7241 <p><ul>
7242
7243 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
7244 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
7245 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
7246 system depend on tasksel tasks in
7247 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
7248 installation.</li>
7249
7250 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
7251 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
7252 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
7253 at least try to enable it for these services:
7254 <ul>
7255
7256   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
7257     quotas.</li>
7258   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
7259   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
7260   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
7261   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
7262   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
7263
7264 </ul></li>
7265
7266 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
7267 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
7268 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
7269 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
7270
7271 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
7272 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
7273 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
7274
7275 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
7276 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
7277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
7278 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
7279 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
7280 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
7281
7282 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
7283 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
7284 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
7285 in Wheezy.
7286
7287 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
7288 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
7289 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
7290
7291 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
7292 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
7293 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
7294 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
7295
7296 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
7297 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
7298 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
7299 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
7300
7301 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
7302 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
7303 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
7304
7305 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
7306 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
7307 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
7308
7309 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
7310 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
7311 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
7312 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
7313 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
7314
7315 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
7316 <ul>
7317
7318 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
7319 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
7320 <li>and probably more?</li>
7321 </ul></li>
7322
7323 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
7324 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
7325 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
7326 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
7327 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
7328 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
7329 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
7330 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
7331
7332
7333 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
7334 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
7335 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
7336 use.</li>
7337
7338 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
7339 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
7340 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
7341 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
7342 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
7343
7344 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
7345 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
7346 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
7347 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
7348 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
7349 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
7350
7351 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
7352 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
7353 There are at least three implementations,
7354 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
7355 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
7356 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
7357 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
7358 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
7359 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
7360 given room.</li>
7361
7362 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
7363 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
7364 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
7365 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
7366 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
7367 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
7368 investigated.</li>
7369
7370 </ul></p>
7371
7372 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
7373 version.</p>
7374
7375       </div>
7376       <div class="tags">
7377
7378
7379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7380
7381
7382       </div>
7383     </div>
7384     <div class="padding"></div>
7385
7386     <div class="entry">
7387       <div class="title">
7388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
7389       </div>
7390       <div class="date">
7391          9th June 2012
7392       </div>
7393       <div class="body">
7394         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
7395 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
7396 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
7397 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
7398 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
7399 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
7400 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
7401 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
7402 be willing to pay for.</p>
7403
7404 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
7405 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
7406 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
7407 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
7408 Orwell</a>.</p>
7409
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="tags">
7412
7413
7414         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
7415
7416
7417       </div>
7418     </div>
7419     <div class="padding"></div>
7420
7421     <div class="entry">
7422       <div class="title">
7423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
7424       </div>
7425       <div class="date">
7426          6th June 2012
7427       </div>
7428       <div class="body">
7429         <p>A few days ago
7430 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
7431 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
7432 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
7433 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
7434 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
7435 code for HP, Dell and IBM
7436 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
7437 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
7438 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
7439 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
7440 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
7441
7442 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
7443 output:
7444
7445 <blockquote><pre>
7446 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
7447 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
7448 %
7449 </pre></blockquote>
7450
7451 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
7452 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
7453 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
7454
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="tags">
7457
7458
7459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7460
7461
7462       </div>
7463     </div>
7464     <div class="padding"></div>
7465
7466     <div class="entry">
7467       <div class="title">
7468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
7469       </div>
7470       <div class="date">
7471          2nd June 2012
7472       </div>
7473       <div class="body">
7474         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
7475 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7476 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
7477 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
7478 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7479 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7480
7481 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7482
7483 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
7484 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
7485 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
7486 by Angela).</p>
7487
7488 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
7489 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
7490 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
7491 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
7492 becoming an osteopath.</p>
7493
7494 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
7495 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
7496 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
7497 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
7498 skills with communication skills.</p>
7499
7500 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7501 project?</strong></p>
7502
7503 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
7504 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
7505 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
7506 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
7507 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
7508
7509 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
7510 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
7511 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
7512 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
7513 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
7514 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
7515 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
7516 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
7517 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
7518
7519 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
7520 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
7521 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
7522
7523 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
7524
7525 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
7526 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
7527 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
7528 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
7529 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
7530 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
7531 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
7532 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
7533 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
7534 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
7535 point.</p>
7536
7537 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
7538 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
7539 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
7540 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
7541 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
7542 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
7543
7544 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
7545 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
7546 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
7547 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
7548 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
7549 spare time.</p>
7550
7551 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
7552 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
7553 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
7554 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
7555 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
7556
7557 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
7558 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
7559 avoidance do exist.</p>
7560
7561 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
7562 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
7563 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
7564 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
7565 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
7566 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
7567 and probably a gain for all.</p>
7568
7569 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7570 Edu?</strong></p>
7571
7572 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
7573 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
7574 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
7575 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
7576 project communication, honest communication within the group of
7577 developers, etc.</p>
7578
7579 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7580 Edu?</strong></p>
7581
7582 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
7583
7584 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
7585 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
7586 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
7587 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
7588 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
7589 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
7590 contribute).</p>
7591
7592 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
7593 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
7594 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
7595 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
7596 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
7597 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
7598 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
7599 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
7600 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
7601 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
7602
7603 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7604
7605 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
7606
7607 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
7608 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
7609 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
7610
7611 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
7612 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
7613 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
7614 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
7615
7616 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
7617 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
7618 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
7619 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
7620 whiteboard.</p>
7621
7622 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
7623
7624 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7625 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7626
7627 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
7628 enrol people.</p>
7629
7630       </div>
7631       <div class="tags">
7632
7633
7634         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7635
7636
7637       </div>
7638     </div>
7639     <div class="padding"></div>
7640
7641     <div class="entry">
7642       <div class="title">
7643         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
7644       </div>
7645       <div class="date">
7646          1st June 2012
7647       </div>
7648       <div class="body">
7649         <p>A few years ago I wrote
7650 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
7651 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
7652 I have learned from colleges here at the
7653 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
7654 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
7655 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
7656 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
7657 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
7658
7659 <p><pre>
7660 use strict;
7661 use warnings;
7662 use SOAP::Lite;
7663 use Data::Dumper;
7664 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
7665 my $App = 'test';
7666 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
7667 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
7668 my $s = SOAP::Lite
7669     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
7670     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
7671     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
7672     ;
7673 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
7674     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
7675     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
7676     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
7677 );
7678 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
7679 </pre></p>
7680
7681 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
7682
7683 <p><pre>
7684 $VAR1 = {
7685           'Asset' => {
7686                      'Entitlements' => {
7687                                        'EntitlementData' => [
7688                                                             {
7689                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7690                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
7691                                                               'Provider' => '',
7692                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7693                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7694                                                             },
7695                                                             {
7696                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7697                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
7698                                                               'Provider' => '',
7699                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7700                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7701                                                             },
7702                                                             {
7703                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7704                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
7705                                                               'Provider' => '',
7706                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7707                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7708                                                             }
7709                                                           ]
7710                                      },
7711                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
7712                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
7713                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
7714                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
7715                                           'Buid' => '2323',
7716                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
7717                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
7718                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
7719                                         }
7720                    }
7721         };
7722 </pre></p>
7723
7724 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
7725 service outside the
7726 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
7727 documentation</a>, and according to
7728 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
7729 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
7730 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
7731
7732 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
7733 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
7734
7735       </div>
7736       <div class="tags">
7737
7738
7739         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7740
7741
7742       </div>
7743     </div>
7744     <div class="padding"></div>
7745
7746     <div class="entry">
7747       <div class="title">
7748         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
7749       </div>
7750       <div class="date">
7751         31st May 2012
7752       </div>
7753       <div class="body">
7754         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
7755 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
7756 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
7757 running Debian Squeeze, where
7758 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
7759 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
7760 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
7761 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
7762 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
7763 another day.</p>
7764
7765 <p>After calibration, I get a
7766 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
7767 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
7768 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
7769 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
7770 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
7771 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
7772 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
7773 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
7774 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
7775 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
7776 and a simple</p>
7777
7778 <p><pre>
7779 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
7780 </pre></p>
7781
7782 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
7783 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
7784 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
7785 enough for now.</p>
7786
7787       </div>
7788       <div class="tags">
7789
7790
7791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7792
7793
7794       </div>
7795     </div>
7796     <div class="padding"></div>
7797
7798     <div class="entry">
7799       <div class="title">
7800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
7801       </div>
7802       <div class="date">
7803         27th May 2012
7804       </div>
7805       <div class="body">
7806         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
7807 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7808 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
7809 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
7810 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
7811 since then, helping to make sure the
7812 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7813 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
7814
7815 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7816
7817 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
7818 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
7819 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
7820 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
7821 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
7822 our computer network.</p>
7823
7824 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
7825 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
7826 (4 months).</p>
7827
7828 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7829 project?</strong></p>
7830
7831 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
7832 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
7833 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
7834 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
7835 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
7836 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
7837 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
7838 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
7839 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
7840 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
7841 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
7842 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
7843 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
7844 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
7845
7846 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7847 Edu?</strong></p>
7848
7849 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
7850 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
7851 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
7852 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
7853 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
7854 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
7855 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
7856 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
7857
7858 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7859 Edu?</strong></p>
7860
7861 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
7862 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
7863 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
7864 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
7865 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
7866 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
7867 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
7868 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
7869 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
7870 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
7871 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
7872 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
7873
7874 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7875
7876 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
7877 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
7878 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
7879
7880 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7881 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7882
7883 <p><ol>
7884
7885 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
7886 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
7887 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
7888 developing.</li>
7889
7890 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
7891 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
7892 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
7893 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
7894 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
7895
7896 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
7897 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
7898 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
7899
7900 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
7901 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
7902 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
7903 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
7904
7905 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
7906 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
7907 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
7908
7909 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
7910
7911 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
7912 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
7913 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
7914 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
7915
7916 </ol></p>
7917
7918       </div>
7919       <div class="tags">
7920
7921
7922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
7923
7924
7925       </div>
7926     </div>
7927     <div class="padding"></div>
7928
7929     <div class="entry">
7930       <div class="title">
7931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
7932       </div>
7933       <div class="date">
7934         26th May 2012
7935       </div>
7936       <div class="body">
7937         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
7938 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
7939 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
7940 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
7941 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
7942
7943 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
7944 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
7945 comment:</p>
7946
7947 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
7948 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
7949 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
7950 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
7951 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
7952 </blockquote></p>
7953
7954 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
7955 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
7956 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
7957 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
7958 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
7959 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
7960 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
7961 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
7962 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
7963 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
7964 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
7965 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
7966 of wasted effort.</p>
7967
7968 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
7969 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
7970 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
7971
7972 <p>See
7973 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
7974 and
7975 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
7976 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
7977 </blockquote></p>
7978
7979       </div>
7980       <div class="tags">
7981
7982
7983         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7984
7985
7986       </div>
7987     </div>
7988     <div class="padding"></div>
7989
7990     <div class="entry">
7991       <div class="title">
7992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
7993       </div>
7994       <div class="date">
7995         18th May 2012
7996       </div>
7997       <div class="body">
7998         <p>In january, I
7999 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
8000 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
8001 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
8002 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
8003 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
8004 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
8005 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
8006 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
8007 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
8008 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
8009
8010 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
8011 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
8012 drivers. :)</p>
8013
8014       </div>
8015       <div class="tags">
8016
8017
8018         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8019
8020
8021       </div>
8022     </div>
8023     <div class="padding"></div>
8024
8025     <div class="entry">
8026       <div class="title">
8027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
8028       </div>
8029       <div class="date">
8030         13th May 2012
8031       </div>
8032       <div class="body">
8033         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
8034 publish another interview with the people behind
8035 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
8036 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
8037 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
8038 details get right before release.
8039
8040 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8041
8042 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
8043 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
8044 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
8045 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
8046 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
8047 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
8048 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
8049 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
8050
8051 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
8052 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
8053 home since 2006.</p>
8054
8055 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8056 project?</strong></p>
8057
8058 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
8059 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
8060 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
8061 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
8062 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
8063 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
8064
8065 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
8066 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
8067 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
8068 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
8069 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
8070 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
8071 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
8072 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
8073 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
8074 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
8075 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
8076 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
8077 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
8078 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
8079 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
8080 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
8081
8082 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8083 Edu?</strong></p>
8084
8085 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
8086 for me as today.</p>
8087
8088 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
8089
8090 <p><ul>
8091
8092 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
8093 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
8094
8095 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
8096 cost.</li>
8097
8098 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
8099 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
8100 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
8101 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
8102 server</li>
8103
8104 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
8105 school.</li>
8106
8107 </ul></p>
8108
8109 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
8110 came up in this way:</p>
8111
8112 <p><ul>
8113
8114 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
8115 now.</li>
8116
8117 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
8118 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
8119 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
8120
8121 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
8122 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
8123 interfaces used in the past.</li>
8124
8125 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
8126 different needs.</li>
8127
8128 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
8129
8130 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
8131 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
8132 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
8133
8134 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
8135 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
8136
8137 </ul></p>
8138
8139 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8140 Edu?</strong></p>
8141
8142 <p><ul>
8143
8144 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
8145 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
8146 whole municipality areas.</li>
8147
8148 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
8149 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
8150 politicians.</li>
8151
8152 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
8153
8154 </ul></p>
8155
8156 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8157
8158 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
8159 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
8160 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
8161 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
8162 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
8163 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
8164
8165 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
8166 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
8167 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
8168 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
8169 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
8170
8171 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8172 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8173
8174 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
8175 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
8176 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
8177
8178       </div>
8179       <div class="tags">
8180
8181
8182         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8183
8184
8185       </div>
8186     </div>
8187     <div class="padding"></div>
8188
8189     <div class="entry">
8190       <div class="title">
8191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
8192       </div>
8193       <div class="date">
8194         30th April 2012
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="body">
8197         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
8198 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
8199
8200 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
8201 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
8202 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
8203 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
8204 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
8205 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
8206 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
8207 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
8208 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
8209 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
8210 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
8211 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
8212 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
8213 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
8214 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
8215 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
8216
8217 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
8218 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
8219 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
8220 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
8221 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
8222 finally found a Danish supplier
8223 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
8224 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
8225 days ago.</p>
8226
8227 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
8228 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
8229 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
8230 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
8231 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
8232 toys.</p>
8233
8234       </div>
8235       <div class="tags">
8236
8237
8238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8239
8240
8241       </div>
8242     </div>
8243     <div class="padding"></div>
8244
8245     <div class="entry">
8246       <div class="title">
8247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
8248       </div>
8249       <div class="date">
8250         26th April 2012
8251       </div>
8252       <div class="body">
8253         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
8254 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
8255 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
8256 that the video editor application included with
8257 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
8258 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
8259 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
8260
8261 <p><blockquote>
8262 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
8263 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
8264 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
8265 </blockquote></p>
8266
8267 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
8268
8269 <p><blockquote>
8270 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
8271 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
8272 </blockquote></p>
8273
8274 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
8275 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
8276 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
8277 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
8278 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
8279 video.  AMR is
8280 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
8281 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
8282 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
8283 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
8284 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
8285 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
8286 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
8287
8288 <p>I know why I prefer
8289 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
8290 standards</a> also for video.</p>
8291
8292       </div>
8293       <div class="tags">
8294
8295
8296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8297
8298
8299       </div>
8300     </div>
8301     <div class="padding"></div>
8302
8303     <div class="entry">
8304       <div class="title">
8305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
8306       </div>
8307       <div class="date">
8308         19th April 2012
8309       </div>
8310       <div class="body">
8311         <p>Here in Norway, the
8312 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
8313 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
8314 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
8315 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
8316 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
8317 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
8318 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
8319 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
8320 on the same level.</p>
8321
8322 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
8323 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
8324 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
8325 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
8326 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
8327 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
8328 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
8329 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
8330 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
8331 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
8332 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
8333 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
8334 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
8335 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
8336 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
8337 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
8338 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
8339 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
8340
8341 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
8342 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
8343 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
8344 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
8345 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
8346 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
8347 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
8348 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
8349
8350 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
8351 from Simon Phipps
8352 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
8353 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
8354
8355 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
8356 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
8357 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
8358 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
8359 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
8360 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
8361 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
8362 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
8363 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
8364
8365       </div>
8366       <div class="tags">
8367
8368
8369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8370
8371
8372       </div>
8373     </div>
8374     <div class="padding"></div>
8375
8376     <div class="entry">
8377       <div class="title">
8378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
8379       </div>
8380       <div class="date">
8381         15th April 2012
8382       </div>
8383       <div class="body">
8384         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8385 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
8386 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
8387 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
8388 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
8389 up in the recently released
8390 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8391 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8392
8393 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8394
8395 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
8396 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
8397 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
8398 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
8399 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
8400 information technology and science/technology.</p>
8401
8402 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8403 project?</strong></p>
8404
8405 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
8406 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
8407 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
8408 contributing.</p>
8409
8410 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8411 Edu?</strong></p>
8412
8413 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
8414 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
8415 Debian Project!</p>
8416
8417 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8418 Edu?</strong></p>
8419
8420 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
8421 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
8422 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
8423 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
8424 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
8425 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
8426 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
8427
8428 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
8429 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
8430
8431 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8432
8433 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
8434 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
8435 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
8436 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
8437
8438 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8439 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8440
8441 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
8442 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
8443 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
8444 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
8445 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
8446 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
8447 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
8448
8449 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
8450 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
8451 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
8452 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
8453 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
8454 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
8455 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
8456 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
8457
8458       </div>
8459       <div class="tags">
8460
8461
8462         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8463
8464
8465       </div>
8466     </div>
8467     <div class="padding"></div>
8468
8469     <div class="entry">
8470       <div class="title">
8471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
8472       </div>
8473       <div class="date">
8474          8th April 2012
8475       </div>
8476       <div class="body">
8477         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
8478 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
8479 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
8480 contributor to the
8481 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8482 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
8483
8484 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8485
8486 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
8487 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
8488
8489 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8490 project?</strong></p>
8491
8492 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
8493 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
8494 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
8495 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
8496 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
8497 "localisation".</p>
8498
8499 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8500 Edu?</strong></p>
8501
8502 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8503 Edu?</strong></p>
8504
8505 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
8506 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
8507 education system.</p>
8508
8509 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
8510 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
8511 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
8512 money on the latest hardware.</p>
8513
8514 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8515
8516 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
8517 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
8518 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
8519
8520 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8521 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8522
8523 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
8524 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
8525 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
8526
8527       </div>
8528       <div class="tags">
8529
8530
8531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8532
8533
8534       </div>
8535     </div>
8536     <div class="padding"></div>
8537
8538     <div class="entry">
8539       <div class="title">
8540         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
8541       </div>
8542       <div class="date">
8543          6th April 2012
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="body">
8546         <p>Recently I have spent time with
8547 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
8548 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8549 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
8550 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
8551 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
8552 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
8553 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
8554 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
8555
8556 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
8557 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
8558 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
8559 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
8560 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
8561 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
8562 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
8563 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
8564
8565 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
8566 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
8567 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
8568 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
8569 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
8570 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
8571 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
8572 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
8573
8574 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
8575 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
8576 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
8577 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
8578 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
8579 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
8580 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
8581 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
8582 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
8583 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
8584
8585 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
8586 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
8587 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
8588 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
8589
8590 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
8591 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
8592
8593       </div>
8594       <div class="tags">
8595
8596
8597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8598
8599
8600       </div>
8601     </div>
8602     <div class="padding"></div>
8603
8604     <div class="entry">
8605       <div class="title">
8606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
8607       </div>
8608       <div class="date">
8609          5th April 2012
8610       </div>
8611       <div class="body">
8612         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
8613 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
8614 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
8615 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
8616 for schools.  Check out his article
8617 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
8618 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
8619
8620       </div>
8621       <div class="tags">
8622
8623
8624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8625
8626
8627       </div>
8628     </div>
8629     <div class="padding"></div>
8630
8631     <div class="entry">
8632       <div class="title">
8633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
8634       </div>
8635       <div class="date">
8636          1st April 2012
8637       </div>
8638       <div class="body">
8639         <p>Germany is a core area for the
8640 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8641 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
8642 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
8643
8644 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8645
8646 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
8647 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
8648 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
8649 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
8650 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
8651 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
8652 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
8653 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
8654
8655 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
8656 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
8657 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
8658 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
8659 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
8660 the end of April this year.</p>
8661
8662 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8663 project?</strong></p>
8664
8665 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
8666 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
8667 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
8668 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
8669 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
8670 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
8671 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
8672 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
8673 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
8674 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
8675 Skolelinux.</p>
8676
8677 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
8678 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
8679 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
8680 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
8681 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
8682 the admin teachers.</p>
8683
8684 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8685 Edu?</strong></p>
8686
8687 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
8688 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
8689 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
8690
8691 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
8692 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
8693 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
8694 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
8695 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
8696
8697 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8698 Edu?</strong></p>
8699
8700 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
8701
8702 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8703
8704 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
8705 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
8706 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
8707 LibreOffice.</p>
8708
8709 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8710 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8711
8712 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
8713 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
8714 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
8715
8716       </div>
8717       <div class="tags">
8718
8719
8720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8721
8722
8723       </div>
8724     </div>
8725     <div class="padding"></div>
8726
8727     <div class="entry">
8728       <div class="title">
8729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
8730       </div>
8731       <div class="date">
8732         25th March 2012
8733       </div>
8734       <div class="body">
8735         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
8736
8737 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
8738 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
8739 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
8740 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
8741 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
8742 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
8743 and download as a
8744 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
8745 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
8746
8747 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
8748   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
8749     <p>Download video as
8750       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
8751 </video></p>
8752
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="tags">
8755
8756
8757         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8758
8759
8760       </div>
8761     </div>
8762     <div class="padding"></div>
8763
8764     <div class="entry">
8765       <div class="title">
8766         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="date">
8769         19th March 2012
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="body">
8772         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8773 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
8774 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8775 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
8776 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
8777
8778 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8779
8780 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
8781 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
8782 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
8783 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
8784 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
8785 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
8786 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
8787 installations.</p>
8788
8789 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8790 project?</strong></p>
8791
8792 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
8793 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
8794 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
8795 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
8796 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
8797 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
8798 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
8799 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
8800 these things we decided to try it.</p>
8801
8802 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8803 Edu?</strong></p>
8804
8805 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
8806 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
8807 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
8808 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
8809 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
8810 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
8811 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
8812 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
8813
8814 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8815 Edu?</strong></p>
8816
8817 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
8818 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
8819 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
8820 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
8821 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
8822
8823 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8824
8825 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
8826 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
8827 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
8828 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
8829 that counts...)</p>
8830
8831 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8832 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8833
8834 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
8835 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
8836 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
8837 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
8838 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
8839 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
8840 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
8841 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
8842 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
8843 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
8844 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
8845
8846 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
8847 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
8848 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
8849
8850       </div>
8851       <div class="tags">
8852
8853
8854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
8855
8856
8857       </div>
8858     </div>
8859     <div class="padding"></div>
8860
8861     <div class="entry">
8862       <div class="title">
8863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
8864       </div>
8865       <div class="date">
8866         16th March 2012
8867       </div>
8868       <div class="body">
8869         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
8870 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
8871 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
8872 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
8873
8874 <ol>
8875
8876 <li>The documentation is written in a
8877 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
8878 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
8879 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
8880 docbook XML.</li>
8881
8882 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
8883 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
8884 with the translated text.</li>
8885
8886 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
8887 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
8888 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
8889 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
8890 images.</li>
8891
8892 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
8893 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
8894
8895 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
8896 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
8897
8898 </ol>
8899
8900 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
8901 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
8902 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
8903 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
8904 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
8905
8906 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
8907 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
8908 package</a>.</p>
8909
8910       </div>
8911       <div class="tags">
8912
8913
8914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8915
8916
8917       </div>
8918     </div>
8919     <div class="padding"></div>
8920
8921     <div class="entry">
8922       <div class="title">
8923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
8924       </div>
8925       <div class="date">
8926         11th March 2012
8927       </div>
8928       <div class="body">
8929         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
8930 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
8931 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
8932 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
8933 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
8934 you have not done so already.</p>
8935
8936 <p>I plan to present the new version at
8937 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
8938 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
8939 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
8940
8941       </div>
8942       <div class="tags">
8943
8944
8945         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8946
8947
8948       </div>
8949     </div>
8950     <div class="padding"></div>
8951
8952     <div class="entry">
8953       <div class="title">
8954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
8955       </div>
8956       <div class="date">
8957          9th March 2012
8958       </div>
8959       <div class="body">
8960         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
8961 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
8962 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8963 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
8964 more international audience.</p>
8965
8966 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8967 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
8968 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
8969 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
8970 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
8971 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
8972 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
8973
8974
8975 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8976
8977 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
8978 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
8979 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
8980 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
8981 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
8982 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
8983 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
8984 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
8985 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
8986 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
8987 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
8988
8989 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8990 project?</strong></p>
8991
8992 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
8993 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
8994 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
8995 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
8996 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
8997 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
8998 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
8999 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
9000 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
9001 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
9002 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
9003 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
9004 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
9005
9006 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9007 Edu?</strong></p>
9008
9009 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
9010 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
9011 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
9012 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
9013 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
9014 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
9015 Japan.</p>
9016
9017 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9018 Edu?</strong></p>
9019
9020 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
9021 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
9022 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
9023 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
9024 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
9025 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
9026 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
9027 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
9028 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
9029 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
9030 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
9031 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
9032 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
9033 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
9034 help.</p>
9035
9036 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9037
9038 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
9039 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
9040 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
9041 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
9042 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
9043 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
9044 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
9045 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
9046 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
9047 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
9048 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
9049
9050 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9051 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9052
9053 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
9054 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
9055 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
9056 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
9057 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
9058 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
9059 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
9060 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
9061 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
9062 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
9063 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
9064 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
9065
9066       </div>
9067       <div class="tags">
9068
9069
9070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
9071
9072
9073       </div>
9074     </div>
9075     <div class="padding"></div>
9076
9077     <div class="entry">
9078       <div class="title">
9079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
9080       </div>
9081       <div class="date">
9082          7th March 2012
9083       </div>
9084       <div class="body">
9085         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9086
9087 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
9088 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
9089 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
9090 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
9091 download as a
9092 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
9093 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
9094
9095 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9096   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
9097     <p>Download video as
9098       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
9099 </video></p>
9100
9101       </div>
9102       <div class="tags">
9103
9104
9105         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9106
9107
9108       </div>
9109     </div>
9110     <div class="padding"></div>
9111
9112     <div class="entry">
9113       <div class="title">
9114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9115       </div>
9116       <div class="date">
9117          4th March 2012
9118       </div>
9119       <div class="body">
9120         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
9121 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9122 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9123 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
9124 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
9125 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9126
9127       </div>
9128       <div class="tags">
9129
9130
9131         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9132
9133
9134       </div>
9135     </div>
9136     <div class="padding"></div>
9137
9138     <div class="entry">
9139       <div class="title">
9140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
9141       </div>
9142       <div class="date">
9143          3rd March 2012
9144       </div>
9145       <div class="body">
9146         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9147 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
9148 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
9149 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
9150 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
9151 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
9152 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
9153 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
9154 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
9155 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
9156 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
9157 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
9158 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
9159 year...</p>
9160
9161 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
9162 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
9163 name,
9164 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
9165 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
9166 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
9167 mean). I've been following
9168 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
9169 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
9170 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
9171 Check it out. :)</p>
9172
9173       </div>
9174       <div class="tags">
9175
9176
9177         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9178
9179
9180       </div>
9181     </div>
9182     <div class="padding"></div>
9183
9184     <div class="entry">
9185       <div class="title">
9186         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9187       </div>
9188       <div class="date">
9189         27th February 2012
9190       </div>
9191       <div class="body">
9192         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
9193 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9194 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
9195 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
9196 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
9197 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
9198 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9199
9200       </div>
9201       <div class="tags">
9202
9203
9204         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9205
9206
9207       </div>
9208     </div>
9209     <div class="padding"></div>
9210
9211     <div class="entry">
9212       <div class="title">
9213         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9214       </div>
9215       <div class="date">
9216         19th February 2012
9217       </div>
9218       <div class="body">
9219         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
9220 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
9221 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9222 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9223 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
9224 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
9225 solution for your school.</p>
9226
9227       </div>
9228       <div class="tags">
9229
9230
9231         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9232
9233
9234       </div>
9235     </div>
9236     <div class="padding"></div>
9237
9238     <div class="entry">
9239       <div class="title">
9240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
9241       </div>
9242       <div class="date">
9243         14th February 2012
9244       </div>
9245       <div class="body">
9246         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
9247 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
9248 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
9249 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
9250 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
9251 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
9252 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
9253 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
9254 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
9255
9256 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
9257 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
9258 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
9259 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
9260 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
9261
9262 <blockquote><pre>
9263 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
9264 do
9265     printf "Failed disk $d: "
9266     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
9267 done
9268 </blockquote></pre>
9269
9270 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
9271 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
9272
9273 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
9274
9275 <blockquote><pre>
9276 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9277 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9278 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
9279 </blockquote></pre>
9280
9281 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
9282 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
9283 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
9284 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
9285 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
9286 mounted inside my box.</p>
9287
9288 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
9289 Software RAID in the
9290 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
9291 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
9292 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
9293 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
9294 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
9295 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
9296
9297       </div>
9298       <div class="tags">
9299
9300
9301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
9302
9303
9304       </div>
9305     </div>
9306     <div class="padding"></div>
9307
9308     <div class="entry">
9309       <div class="title">
9310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9311       </div>
9312       <div class="date">
9313         13th February 2012
9314       </div>
9315       <div class="body">
9316         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
9317 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
9318 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
9319 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
9320 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
9321 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
9322 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
9323 change the global proxy setting by editing
9324 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
9325 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
9326
9327 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
9328 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
9329 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
9330
9331 <blockquote><pre>
9332 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
9333 {
9334    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
9335        isPlainHostName(host) ||
9336        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
9337       return "DIRECT";
9338    else
9339       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
9340 }
9341 </pre></blockquote>
9342
9343 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
9344
9345 <blockquote><pre>
9346 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9347 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9348 </pre></blockquote>
9349
9350 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
9351 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
9352 would be used for
9353 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
9354 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
9355 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
9356 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
9357 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
9358 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
9359 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
9360 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
9361 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
9362 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
9363
9364 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
9365 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
9366 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
9367 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
9368 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
9369 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
9370
9371 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
9372 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
9373 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
9374 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
9375 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
9376 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
9377 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
9378 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
9379 the network setup changes.</p>
9380
9381 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
9382 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
9383 draft</a> and a
9384 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
9385 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
9386
9387       </div>
9388       <div class="tags">
9389
9390
9391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9392
9393
9394       </div>
9395     </div>
9396     <div class="padding"></div>
9397
9398     <div class="entry">
9399       <div class="title">
9400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
9401       </div>
9402       <div class="date">
9403          5th February 2012
9404       </div>
9405       <div class="body">
9406         <p>Since the Lenny version of
9407 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
9408 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
9409 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
9410 in the morning.  This is done using the
9411 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
9412
9413 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
9414 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
9415 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
9416 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
9417 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
9418 the
9419 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
9420 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
9421 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
9422 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
9423 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
9424
9425 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
9426 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
9427 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
9428 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
9429 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
9430 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
9431 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
9432
9433 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
9434 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
9435 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
9436 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
9437 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
9438
9439       </div>
9440       <div class="tags">
9441
9442
9443         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9444
9445
9446       </div>
9447     </div>
9448     <div class="padding"></div>
9449
9450     <div class="entry">
9451       <div class="title">
9452         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9453       </div>
9454       <div class="date">
9455          4th February 2012
9456       </div>
9457       <div class="body">
9458         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
9459 publish the third beta version of
9460 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9461 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
9462 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
9463 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
9464 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
9465 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
9466 on the project announcement list.</p>
9467
9468 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
9469 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
9470
9471 <ul>
9472
9473 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
9474   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
9475   the installation.</li>
9476
9477 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
9478   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
9479
9480 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
9481   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
9482   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
9483
9484 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
9485   for the local system administrator is created during installation
9486   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
9487   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
9488   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
9489   up to date on the system.</li>
9490
9491 </ul>
9492
9493 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
9494 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
9495 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
9496 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
9497
9498 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
9499 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
9500 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
9501 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
9502 will see you there?</p>
9503
9504       </div>
9505       <div class="tags">
9506
9507
9508         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9509
9510
9511       </div>
9512     </div>
9513     <div class="padding"></div>
9514
9515     <div class="entry">
9516       <div class="title">
9517         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
9518       </div>
9519       <div class="date">
9520         27th January 2012
9521       </div>
9522       <div class="body">
9523         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
9524 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
9525 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9526 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
9527 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
9528 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
9529 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
9530
9531 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
9532 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
9533 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
9534 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
9535 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
9536 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
9537 not taken care of by this.</p>
9538
9539 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
9540 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
9541 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
9542 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
9543 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
9544 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
9545 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
9546 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
9547 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
9548 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
9549 firmware packages.</p>
9550
9551 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
9552 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
9553 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
9554 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
9555 initrd with extra firmware, the
9556 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
9557 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
9558 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
9559
9560 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
9561 network cards working.  For this,
9562 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
9563 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
9564 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
9565
9566 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
9567 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
9568 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
9569
9570 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
9571 try.</p>
9572
9573       </div>
9574       <div class="tags">
9575
9576
9577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9578
9579
9580       </div>
9581     </div>
9582     <div class="padding"></div>
9583
9584     <div class="entry">
9585       <div class="title">
9586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
9587       </div>
9588       <div class="date">
9589         25th January 2012
9590       </div>
9591       <div class="body">
9592         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
9593 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
9594 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
9595 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
9596 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
9597
9598 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
9599 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
9600 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
9601 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
9602 this is done, log on to the central server and run
9603 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
9604 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
9605 will look similar to this:</p>
9606
9607 <p><blockquote><pre>
9608 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
9609 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
9610 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
9611
9612 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
9613
9614 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9615 enter password: *******
9616 %
9617 </pre></blockquote></p>
9618
9619 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
9620 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
9621 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
9622 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
9623 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
9624 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
9625 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
9626 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
9627 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
9628 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
9629 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
9630 automatically.</p>
9631
9632 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
9633 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
9634
9635 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
9636 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
9637 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
9638
9639       </div>
9640       <div class="tags">
9641
9642
9643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9644
9645
9646       </div>
9647     </div>
9648     <div class="padding"></div>
9649
9650     <div class="entry">
9651       <div class="title">
9652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
9653       </div>
9654       <div class="date">
9655         10th January 2012
9656       </div>
9657       <div class="body">
9658         <p>In the Squeeze version of
9659 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
9660 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
9661 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
9662 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
9663 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
9664 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
9665 first time.</p>
9666
9667 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
9668 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
9669 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
9670 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
9671
9672 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
9673 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
9674 new setting.</p>
9675
9676 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
9677 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
9678 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
9679
9680       </div>
9681       <div class="tags">
9682
9683
9684         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9685
9686
9687       </div>
9688     </div>
9689     <div class="padding"></div>
9690
9691     <div class="entry">
9692       <div class="title">
9693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9694       </div>
9695       <div class="date">
9696          7th January 2012
9697       </div>
9698       <div class="body">
9699         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
9700 the second beta version of
9701 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
9702 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
9703 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
9704 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
9705 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
9706 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
9707 on the project announcement list.</p>
9708
9709       </div>
9710       <div class="tags">
9711
9712
9713         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9714
9715
9716       </div>
9717     </div>
9718     <div class="padding"></div>
9719
9720     <div class="entry">
9721       <div class="title">
9722         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
9723       </div>
9724       <div class="date">
9725          3rd January 2012
9726       </div>
9727       <div class="body">
9728         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
9729 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
9730 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
9731 interesting.</p>
9732
9733 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
9734 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
9735 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
9736 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
9737 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
9738 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
9739 wrap up its tasks.</p>
9740
9741 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
9742 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
9743 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
9744 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
9745 because I was typing.</P>
9746
9747 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
9748 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
9749 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
9750 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
9751 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
9752 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
9753 generate entropy.</p>
9754
9755 <p>The fix is in
9756 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
9757 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
9758 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
9759 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
9760
9761       </div>
9762       <div class="tags">
9763
9764
9765         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9766
9767
9768       </div>
9769     </div>
9770     <div class="padding"></div>
9771
9772     <div class="entry">
9773       <div class="title">
9774         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
9775       </div>
9776       <div class="date">
9777         21st November 2011
9778       </div>
9779       <div class="body">
9780         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
9781 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
9782 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
9783 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
9784 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
9785 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
9786 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
9787 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
9788 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
9789 the tools to do so.</p>
9790
9791 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
9792 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
9793 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
9794 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
9795
9796 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
9797 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
9798 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
9799 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
9800 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
9801 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
9802 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
9803 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
9804
9805 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
9806 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
9807 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
9808
9809 <p><pre>
9810 #!/usr/bin/perl
9811 use strict;
9812 use warnings;
9813 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
9814 BEGIN {
9815     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
9816     my %rhelmodules = (
9817         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
9818         );
9819     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
9820         eval "use $module;";
9821         if ($@) {
9822             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
9823             system("yum install -y $pkg");
9824             eval "use $module;";
9825         }
9826     }
9827 }
9828 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
9829
9830 upgrade_dell();
9831
9832 exit 0;
9833
9834 sub run_firmware_script {
9835     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
9836     unless ($script) {
9837         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
9838         exit 1
9839     }
9840     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
9841
9842     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
9843         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
9844     } else {
9845         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
9846     }
9847 }
9848
9849 sub run_firmware_scripts {
9850     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
9851     # Run firmware packages
9852     for my $dir (@dirs) {
9853         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
9854         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
9855         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
9856             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
9857             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
9858         }
9859         closedir $dh;
9860     }
9861 }
9862
9863 sub download {
9864     my $url = shift;
9865     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
9866     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
9867 }
9868
9869 sub upgrade_dell {
9870     my @dirs;
9871     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9872     chomp $product;
9873
9874     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
9875
9876         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
9877         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
9878
9879         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
9880             CLEANUP => 1
9881             );
9882         chdir($tmpdir);
9883         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
9884         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
9885         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
9886         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
9887         my $fwopts = "-q";
9888         if (@paths) {
9889             for my $url (@paths) {
9890                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
9891             }
9892             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
9893         } else {
9894             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9895             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9896         }
9897         chdir('/');
9898     } else {
9899         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9900         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9901     }
9902 }
9903
9904 sub fetch_dell_fw {
9905     my $path = shift;
9906     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
9907     download($url);
9908 }
9909
9910 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
9911 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
9912 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
9913 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9914     my $filename = shift;
9915
9916     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9917     chomp $product;
9918     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9919
9920     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9921
9922     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9923     my @paths;
9924     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9925         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9926         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9927         my $oscode;
9928         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9929             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9930         } else {
9931             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9932         }
9933         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9934         {
9935             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9936         }
9937     }
9938     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9939         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9940
9941         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9942         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9943
9944         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9945         for my $path (@paths) {
9946             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9947                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9948             }
9949         }
9950     }
9951     return @paths;
9952 }
9953 </pre>
9954
9955 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9956 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9957 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9958 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9959 outdated.</p>
9960
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="tags">
9963
9964
9965         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>.
9966
9967
9968       </div>
9969     </div>
9970     <div class="padding"></div>
9971
9972     <div class="entry">
9973       <div class="title">
9974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
9975       </div>
9976       <div class="date">
9977          7th October 2011
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="body">
9980         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
9981 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
9982 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
9983 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
9984 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
9985 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
9986 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
9987 models.</p>
9988
9989 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
9990 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
9991 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
9992 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
9993
9994 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
9995 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
9996 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
9997 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
9998 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
9999 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
10000 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
10001 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
10002 distributed.</p>
10003
10004 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
10005
10006 <ul>
10007
10008 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
10009   other relevant equipment.</li>
10010
10011 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
10012
10013 </ul>
10014
10015 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
10016 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
10017 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
10018 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
10019 books available.</p>
10020
10021 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
10022 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
10023 libraries. :)</p>
10024
10025       </div>
10026       <div class="tags">
10027
10028
10029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10030
10031
10032       </div>
10033     </div>
10034     <div class="padding"></div>
10035
10036     <div class="entry">
10037       <div class="title">
10038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
10039       </div>
10040       <div class="date">
10041         17th September 2011
10042       </div>
10043       <div class="body">
10044         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
10045 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
10046 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
10047 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
10048 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
10049 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
10050 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
10051 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
10052
10053 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
10054
10055 <blockquote><pre>
10056 #!/bin/sh
10057 # apt-get install lsdvd
10058 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10059 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
10060 </pre></blockquote>
10061
10062 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
10063 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
10064 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
10065 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
10066
10067 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
10068 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
10069 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
10070 back as an ISO.
10071
10072 <blockquote><pre>
10073 #!/bin/sh
10074 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
10075 set -e
10076 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
10077 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10078 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
10079 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
10080 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
10081 </pre></blockquote>
10082
10083 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
10084
10085 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
10086 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
10087 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
10088 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
10089 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
10090
10091 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
10092 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
10093 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
10094 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
10095 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
10096 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
10097
10098       </div>
10099       <div class="tags">
10100
10101
10102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10103
10104
10105       </div>
10106     </div>
10107     <div class="padding"></div>
10108
10109     <div class="entry">
10110       <div class="title">
10111         <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>
10112       </div>
10113       <div class="date">
10114          4th August 2011
10115       </div>
10116       <div class="body">
10117         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
10118 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
10119 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
10120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
10121 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
10122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
10123 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
10124 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
10125 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
10126
10127 <p><blockquote>
10128 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
10129 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
10130 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
10131 </blockquote></p>
10132
10133 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
10134 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
10135 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
10136 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
10137 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
10138 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
10139 hard to explain.</p>
10140
10141 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
10142 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
10143 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
10144 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
10145 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
10146 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
10147 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
10148 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
10149 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
10150 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
10151 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
10152 mode).</p>
10153
10154 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
10155 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
10156 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
10157 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
10158 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
10159 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
10160 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
10161 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
10162 after visiting single user mode.</p>
10163
10164 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
10165 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
10166 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
10167 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
10168 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
10169 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
10170 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
10171 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
10172
10173 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
10174 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
10175 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
10176
10177       </div>
10178       <div class="tags">
10179
10180
10181         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>.
10182
10183
10184       </div>
10185     </div>
10186     <div class="padding"></div>
10187
10188     <div class="entry">
10189       <div class="title">
10190         <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>
10191       </div>
10192       <div class="date">
10193         30th July 2011
10194       </div>
10195       <div class="body">
10196         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
10197 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
10198 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
10199 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
10200 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
10201 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
10202 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
10203 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
10204 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
10205 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
10206 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
10207 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
10208 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
10209
10210 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
10211 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
10212 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
10213 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
10214 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
10215 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
10216 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
10217 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
10218 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
10219
10220 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
10221 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
10222 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
10223 is presented.</p>
10224
10225 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
10226 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
10227 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
10228 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
10229 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
10230 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
10231 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
10232 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
10233 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
10234 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
10235 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
10236 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
10237 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
10238 find time to push this forward.</p>
10239
10240       </div>
10241       <div class="tags">
10242
10243
10244         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>.
10245
10246
10247       </div>
10248     </div>
10249     <div class="padding"></div>
10250
10251     <div class="entry">
10252       <div class="title">
10253         <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>
10254       </div>
10255       <div class="date">
10256         29th July 2011
10257       </div>
10258       <div class="body">
10259         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
10260 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
10261 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
10262 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
10263 issues.</p>
10264
10265 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
10266 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
10267 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
10268
10269 <ol>
10270
10271 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
10272 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
10273 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
10274 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
10275 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
10276 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
10277 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
10278 Debian.</li>
10279
10280 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
10281 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
10282 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
10283 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
10284 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
10285 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
10286 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
10287 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
10288 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
10289 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
10290 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
10291 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
10292 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
10293
10294 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
10295 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
10296 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
10297 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
10298 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
10299 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
10300 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
10301 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
10302 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
10303 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
10304
10305 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
10306 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
10307 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
10308 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
10309 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
10310 latter behaviour.</li>
10311
10312 </ol>
10313
10314 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
10315 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
10316 it do not matter much.</p>
10317
10318 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
10319 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
10320 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
10321
10322       </div>
10323       <div class="tags">
10324
10325
10326         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>.
10327
10328
10329       </div>
10330     </div>
10331     <div class="padding"></div>
10332
10333     <div class="entry">
10334       <div class="title">
10335         <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>
10336       </div>
10337       <div class="date">
10338         26th July 2011
10339       </div>
10340       <div class="body">
10341         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
10342 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
10343 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
10344 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
10345 security support for a few years.</p>
10346
10347 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
10348 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
10349 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
10350 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
10351 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
10352 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
10353 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
10354 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
10355 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
10356 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
10357 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
10358 easier in the future.</p>
10359
10360 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
10361 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
10362 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
10363 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
10364 do not have time for.</p>
10365
10366       </div>
10367       <div class="tags">
10368
10369
10370         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>.
10371
10372
10373       </div>
10374     </div>
10375     <div class="padding"></div>
10376
10377     <div class="entry">
10378       <div class="title">
10379         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
10380       </div>
10381       <div class="date">
10382         20th June 2011
10383       </div>
10384       <div class="body">
10385         <p>Reading
10386 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
10387 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
10388 parts of the
10389 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
10390 and
10391 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
10392 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
10393 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
10394 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
10395
10396       </div>
10397       <div class="tags">
10398
10399
10400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10401
10402
10403       </div>
10404     </div>
10405     <div class="padding"></div>
10406
10407     <div class="entry">
10408       <div class="title">
10409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
10410       </div>
10411       <div class="date">
10412         30th April 2011
10413       </div>
10414       <div class="body">
10415         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
10416 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
10417 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
10418 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
10419 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
10420 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
10421 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
10422 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
10423 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
10424 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
10425
10426 <p>Where is it?  Visit
10427 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
10428 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
10429 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
10430 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
10431
10432       </div>
10433       <div class="tags">
10434
10435
10436         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
10437
10438
10439       </div>
10440     </div>
10441     <div class="padding"></div>
10442
10443     <div class="entry">
10444       <div class="title">
10445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
10446       </div>
10447       <div class="date">
10448         29th April 2011
10449       </div>
10450       <div class="body">
10451         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
10452 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
10453 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
10454 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
10455 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
10456 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
10457 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
10458 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
10459 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
10460 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
10461 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
10462 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
10463 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
10464
10465 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
10466 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
10467 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
10468 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
10469 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
10470 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
10471 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
10472 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
10473 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
10474 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
10475 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
10476 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
10477 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
10478
10479 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
10480 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
10481 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
10482 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
10483 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
10484 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
10485 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
10486 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
10487 it.</p>
10488
10489 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
10490 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
10491 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
10492 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
10493 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
10494 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
10495 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
10496
10497 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
10498 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
10499 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
10500 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
10501 and range= options.</p>
10502
10503 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
10504 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
10505 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
10506 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
10507 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
10508 to best handle this.  I've noticed
10509 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
10510 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
10511 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
10512 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
10513
10514 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
10515 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
10516 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
10517 discussions instead of only
10518 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
10519 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
10520 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
10521 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
10522 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
10523 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
10524
10525       </div>
10526       <div class="tags">
10527
10528
10529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
10530
10531
10532       </div>
10533     </div>
10534     <div class="padding"></div>
10535
10536     <div class="entry">
10537       <div class="title">
10538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
10539       </div>
10540       <div class="date">
10541          6th April 2011
10542       </div>
10543       <div class="body">
10544         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
10545 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
10546 A few days ago the project
10547 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
10548 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
10549 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
10550 into Gnash.</p>
10551
10552       </div>
10553       <div class="tags">
10554
10555
10556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10557
10558
10559       </div>
10560     </div>
10561     <div class="padding"></div>
10562
10563     <div class="entry">
10564       <div class="title">
10565         <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>
10566       </div>
10567       <div class="date">
10568          3rd April 2011
10569       </div>
10570       <div class="body">
10571         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
10572 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
10573 update in English.</p>
10574
10575 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
10576 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
10577 of the British service
10578 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
10579 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
10580 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
10581 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
10582 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
10583 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
10584 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
10585 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
10586 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
10587 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
10588 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
10589 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
10590 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
10591
10592 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
10593 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
10594 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
10595 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
10596 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
10597 public infrastructure.</p>
10598
10599 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
10600 such service?</p>
10601
10602       </div>
10603       <div class="tags">
10604
10605
10606         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>.
10607
10608
10609       </div>
10610     </div>
10611     <div class="padding"></div>
10612
10613     <div class="entry">
10614       <div class="title">
10615         <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>
10616       </div>
10617       <div class="date">
10618         28th January 2011
10619       </div>
10620       <div class="body">
10621         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
10622 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
10623 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
10624 available on the Internet, and check our locally
10625 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
10626 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
10627 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
10628 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
10629 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
10630 out which security holes were present in our free software
10631 collection.</p>
10632
10633 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
10634 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
10635 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
10636 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
10637 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
10638 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
10639 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
10640 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
10641 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
10642 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
10643 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
10644 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
10645 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
10646 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
10647 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
10648 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
10649
10650 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
10651 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
10652 check out, one could look up
10653 <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
10654 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
10655 The most recent one is
10656 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
10657 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
10658 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
10659
10660 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
10661 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
10662 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
10663 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
10664 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
10665 security issues out.</p>
10666
10667 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
10668 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
10669 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
10670 RHEL is providing
10671 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
10672 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
10673 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
10674
10675 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
10676 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
10677 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
10678 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
10679 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
10680 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
10681 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
10682 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
10683 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
10684 established soon.</p>
10685
10686 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
10687 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
10688 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
10689 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
10690 for their packages.</p>
10691
10692       </div>
10693       <div class="tags">
10694
10695
10696         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>.
10697
10698
10699       </div>
10700     </div>
10701     <div class="padding"></div>
10702
10703     <div class="entry">
10704       <div class="title">
10705         <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>
10706       </div>
10707       <div class="date">
10708         23rd January 2011
10709       </div>
10710       <div class="body">
10711         <p>In the
10712 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
10713 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
10714 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
10715 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
10716 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
10717 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
10718 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
10719 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
10720 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
10721 one of my machines like this:</p>
10722
10723 <pre>
10724 loaded modules:
10725 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
10726 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
10727 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
10728 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
10729 10de:03ec pata_amd
10730 10de:03f6 sata_nv
10731 1022:1103 k8temp
10732 109e:036e bttv
10733 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
10734 11ab:4364 sky2
10735 </pre>
10736
10737 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
10738 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
10739
10740 <pre>
10741 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
10742     echo loaded pci modules:
10743     (
10744         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
10745         for address in * ; do
10746             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10747                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10748                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10749                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10750                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
10751                     echo "$id $module"
10752                 fi
10753             fi
10754         done
10755     )
10756     echo
10757 fi
10758 </pre>
10759
10760 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
10761 mappings:</p>
10762
10763 <pre>
10764 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
10765     echo loaded usb modules:
10766     (
10767         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
10768         for address in * ; do
10769             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10770                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10771                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10772                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10773                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
10774                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
10775                         echo "$id $module"
10776                     fi
10777                 fi
10778             fi
10779         done
10780     )
10781     echo
10782 fi
10783 </pre>
10784
10785 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
10786 well.</p>
10787
10788       </div>
10789       <div class="tags">
10790
10791
10792         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>.
10793
10794
10795       </div>
10796     </div>
10797     <div class="padding"></div>
10798
10799     <div class="entry">
10800       <div class="title">
10801         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
10802       </div>
10803       <div class="date">
10804         16th January 2011
10805       </div>
10806       <div class="body">
10807         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
10808 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
10809 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
10810 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
10811 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
10812 the Wikipedia article on
10813 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
10814 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
10815 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
10816 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
10817 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
10818 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
10819 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
10820 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
10821 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
10822 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
10823 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
10824 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
10825
10826 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
10827 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
10828 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
10829 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
10830 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
10831 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
10832 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
10833 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
10834 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
10835 from last week</a>.</p>
10836
10837 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
10838 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
10839 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
10840 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
10841 was without royalties and license terms, check out
10842 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
10843 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
10844
10845 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
10846 available from
10847 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
10848 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
10849 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
10850
10851 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
10852 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
10853 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
10854 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
10855
10856       </div>
10857       <div class="tags">
10858
10859
10860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10861
10862
10863       </div>
10864     </div>
10865     <div class="padding"></div>
10866
10867     <div class="entry">
10868       <div class="title">
10869         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
10870       </div>
10871       <div class="date">
10872         12th January 2011
10873       </div>
10874       <div class="body">
10875         <p>Today I discovered
10876 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
10877 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
10878 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
10879 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
10880 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
10881 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
10882 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
10883 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
10884 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
10885 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
10886 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
10887 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
10888 on the Google announcement is available from
10889 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
10890 A good read. :)</p>
10891
10892 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
10893 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
10894 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
10895 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
10896 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
10897 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
10898 browsers support H.264, and others support
10899 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
10900 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
10901 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
10902 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
10903 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
10904 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
10905 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
10906 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
10907
10908 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
10909 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
10910 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
10911 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
10912 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
10913 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
10914 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
10915
10916 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
10917 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
10918 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
10919 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
10920 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
10921 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
10922 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
10923
10924 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
10925 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
10926 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
10927 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
10928 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
10929 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
10930 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
10931
10932 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
10933 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
10934 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
10935 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
10936 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
10937 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
10938 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
10939 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
10940 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
10941 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
10942 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
10943 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
10944 I guess time will tell.</p>
10945
10946 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
10947 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
10948 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
10949
10950       </div>
10951       <div class="tags">
10952
10953
10954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10955
10956
10957       </div>
10958     </div>
10959     <div class="padding"></div>
10960
10961     <div class="entry">
10962       <div class="title">
10963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
10964       </div>
10965       <div class="date">
10966         30th December 2010
10967       </div>
10968       <div class="body">
10969         <p>After trying to
10970 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
10971 Ogg Theora</a> to
10972 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
10973 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
10974 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
10975 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
10976 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
10977 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
10978 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
10979
10980 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
10981 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
10982 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
10983 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
10984 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
10985 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
10986 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
10987
10988 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
10989 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
10990
10991       </div>
10992       <div class="tags">
10993
10994
10995         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
10996
10997
10998       </div>
10999     </div>
11000     <div class="padding"></div>
11001
11002     <div class="entry">
11003       <div class="title">
11004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
11005       </div>
11006       <div class="date">
11007         27th December 2010
11008       </div>
11009       <div class="body">
11010         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
11011 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
11012 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
11013 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
11014 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
11015 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
11016 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
11017 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
11018
11019 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
11020 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
11021 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
11022 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
11023 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
11024 page</a>.</p>
11025
11026 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
11027 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
11028 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
11029 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
11030 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
11031 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
11032 specification on equal terms.</p>
11033
11034 <blockquote>
11035
11036 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
11037 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
11038 open standard:</p>
11039
11040 <ul>
11041
11042 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11043 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11044 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
11045 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
11046
11047 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11048 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
11049 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
11050 nominal fee.</li>
11051
11052 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
11053 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
11054 free basis.</li>
11055
11056 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11057
11058 </ul>
11059 </blockquote>
11060
11061 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
11062 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
11063 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
11064 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
11065 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
11066 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
11067 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
11068
11069 <blockquote>
11070
11071 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
11072
11073 <ol>
11074
11075 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
11076 tilgængelig.</li>
11077
11078 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
11079 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
11080
11081 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
11082 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
11083
11084 </ol>
11085
11086 </blockquote>
11087
11088 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
11089 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
11090
11091 <blockquote>
11092
11093 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
11094
11095 <ol>
11096
11097 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
11098 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
11099
11100 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
11101 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
11102 Standard themselves;</li>
11103
11104 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
11105 any party or in any business model;</li>
11106
11107 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
11108 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
11109 parties;</li>
11110
11111 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
11112 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
11113 parties.</li>
11114
11115 </ol>
11116
11117 </blockquote>
11118
11119 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
11120 its
11121 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
11122 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
11123
11124 <blockquote>
11125 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
11126
11127 <ul>
11128
11129 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
11130   democratic:
11131
11132          <ul>
11133
11134          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
11135             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
11136             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
11137             and managed.</li>
11138
11139          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
11140             method, can be changed through input from all
11141             participants.</li>
11142
11143          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
11144             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
11145
11146          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
11147             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
11148
11149          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
11150             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
11151             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
11152
11153          </ul>
11154
11155 </li>
11156
11157 </ul>
11158
11159 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
11160 <ul>
11161
11162 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
11163   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
11164   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
11165   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
11166   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
11167
11168 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
11169   a technical or economic barriers</li>
11170
11171 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
11172   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
11173   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
11174   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
11175   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
11176   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
11177   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
11178   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
11179   intended to function.</li>
11180
11181 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
11182   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
11183   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
11184
11185 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
11186   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
11187   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
11188   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
11189   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
11190   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
11191   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
11192   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
11193
11194       <ul>
11195
11196       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
11197         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
11198         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
11199
11200       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
11201         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
11202         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
11203         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
11204
11205       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
11206         licensor</li>
11207
11208       </ul>
11209 </li>
11210
11211 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
11212   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
11213   or restricted licensing terms</li>
11214
11215 </ul>
11216
11217 </blockquote>
11218
11219 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
11220 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
11221 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
11222 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
11223 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
11224 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
11225 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
11226 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
11227 Standards.</p>
11228
11229       </div>
11230       <div class="tags">
11231
11232
11233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11234
11235
11236       </div>
11237     </div>
11238     <div class="padding"></div>
11239
11240     <div class="entry">
11241       <div class="title">
11242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
11243       </div>
11244       <div class="date">
11245         25th December 2010
11246       </div>
11247       <div class="body">
11248         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
11249 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
11250
11251 <blockquote>
11252
11253 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
11254 as follows:</p>
11255
11256 <ol>
11257
11258 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
11259 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
11260 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
11261
11262 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11263 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11264 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
11265 parties.</li>
11266
11267 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11268 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
11269 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
11270
11271 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
11272 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
11273
11274 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11275
11276 </ol>
11277
11278 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
11279 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
11280 products based on the standard.</p>
11281 </blockquote>
11282
11283 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
11284 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
11285 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
11286 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
11287 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
11288 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
11289 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
11290 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
11291
11292 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
11293
11294 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
11295 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
11296 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
11297 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
11298 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
11299 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
11300 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
11301 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
11302 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
11303 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
11304 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
11305 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
11306 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
11307 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
11308
11309 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
11310
11311 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
11312 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
11313 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
11314 documentation indicating this.</p>
11315
11316 <p>According to
11317 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
11318 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
11319 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
11320 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
11321 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
11322 report is correct.</p>
11323
11324 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
11325
11326 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
11327 container format</a> and both the
11328 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
11329 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
11330 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
11331
11332 <blockquote>
11333
11334 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
11335 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
11336 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
11337 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
11338 specification compliance.
11339
11340 </blockquote>
11341
11342 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
11343 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
11344 this is the term:<p>
11345
11346 <blockquote>
11347
11348 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
11349 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
11350 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
11351 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
11352 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
11353 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
11354 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
11355 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
11356 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
11357 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
11358 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
11359 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
11360
11361 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
11362 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
11363 </blockquote>
11364
11365 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
11366 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
11367 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
11368 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
11369 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
11370
11371 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
11372
11373 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
11374 Theora format.
11375 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
11376 and
11377 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
11378 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
11379 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
11380 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
11381 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
11382 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
11383 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
11384 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
11385
11386 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
11387
11388 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
11389
11390 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11391
11392 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
11393 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
11394 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
11395 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
11396 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
11397 this.</p>
11398
11399 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
11400 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
11401
11402       </div>
11403       <div class="tags">
11404
11405
11406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
11407
11408
11409       </div>
11410     </div>
11411     <div class="padding"></div>
11412
11413     <div class="entry">
11414       <div class="title">
11415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
11416       </div>
11417       <div class="date">
11418         25th December 2010
11419       </div>
11420       <div class="body">
11421         <p>A few days ago
11422 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
11423 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
11424 2.0 of
11425 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
11426 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
11427 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
11428 Nothing very surprising there, given
11429 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
11430 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
11431 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
11432 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
11433 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
11434 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
11435 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
11436 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
11437 standard definition from its content.</p>
11438
11439 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
11440 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
11441 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
11442 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
11443 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
11444 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
11445 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
11446 background information about that story is available in
11447 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
11448 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
11449
11450 <blockquote>
11451 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
11452 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
11453 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
11454
11455 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
11456
11457 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
11458
11459 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
11460
11461 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
11462
11463 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
11464
11465 <p>
11466 <ul>
11467 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
11468 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
11469 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
11470 </ul>
11471 </p>
11472
11473 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
11474
11475 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
11476
11477 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
11478
11479 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
11480
11481 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
11482
11483
11484 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
11485 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
11486 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
11487 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
11488 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
11489 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
11490
11491 </p>
11492
11493 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
11494
11495 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
11496
11497 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
11498
11499 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
11500
11501 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
11502
11503 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
11504
11505 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
11506
11507 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
11508
11509 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
11510
11511 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
11512
11513 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
11514
11515 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
11516
11517 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
11518
11519 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
11520
11521 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
11522
11523 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
11524
11525 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
11526
11527 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
11528
11529 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
11530
11531 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
11532
11533 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
11534
11535 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
11536
11537 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
11538
11539 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
11540
11541 <p>On security:</p>
11542
11543 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
11544
11545 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
11546
11547 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
11548
11549 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
11550
11551 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
11552
11553 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
11554
11555 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
11556
11557 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
11558
11559 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
11560
11561 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
11562
11563 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
11564
11565 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
11566
11567 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
11568
11569 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
11570
11571 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
11572
11573 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
11574
11575 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
11576
11577 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
11578
11579 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
11580
11581 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
11582
11583 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
11584
11585 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
11586
11587 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
11588
11589 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
11590
11591 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
11592
11593 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
11594
11595 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
11596
11597 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
11598
11599 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
11600
11601 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
11602
11603 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
11604
11605 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
11606
11607 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
11608
11609 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
11610
11611 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
11612
11613 <p>Cordially,<br>
11614 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
11615 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
11616 </blockquote>
11617
11618       </div>
11619       <div class="tags">
11620
11621
11622         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11623
11624
11625       </div>
11626     </div>
11627     <div class="padding"></div>
11628
11629     <div class="entry">
11630       <div class="title">
11631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
11632       </div>
11633       <div class="date">
11634         25th December 2010
11635       </div>
11636       <div class="body">
11637         <p>Half a year ago I
11638 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
11639 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
11640 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
11641 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
11642
11643 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
11644 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
11645 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
11646 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
11647 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
11648 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
11649 got such a great test tool available.</p>
11650
11651       </div>
11652       <div class="tags">
11653
11654
11655         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11656
11657
11658       </div>
11659     </div>
11660     <div class="padding"></div>
11661
11662     <div class="entry">
11663       <div class="title">
11664         <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>
11665       </div>
11666       <div class="date">
11667         22nd December 2010
11668       </div>
11669       <div class="body">
11670         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
11671 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
11672 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
11673 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
11674 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
11675 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
11676 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
11677 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
11678 university.</p>
11679
11680 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
11681 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
11682 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
11683 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
11684 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
11685 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
11686 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
11687 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
11688
11689 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
11690 I perform on a new model.</p>
11691
11692 <ul>
11693
11694 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
11695 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
11696 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
11697
11698 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
11699 installation, X.org is working.</li>
11700
11701 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
11702 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
11703 reported by the program.</li>
11704
11705 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
11706 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
11707 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
11708 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
11709 normally test this by playing
11710 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
11711 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
11712
11713 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
11714 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
11715
11716 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
11717 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
11718
11719 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
11720 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
11721
11722 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
11723 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
11724 few.</li>
11725
11726 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
11727 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
11728 notice this.</li>
11729
11730 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
11731 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
11732 resume.</li>
11733
11734 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
11735 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
11736 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
11737 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
11738 not.</li>
11739
11740 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
11741 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
11742 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
11743 existence.</li>
11744
11745 </ul>
11746
11747 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
11748 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
11749 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
11750 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
11751 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
11752 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
11753 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
11754 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
11755
11756       </div>
11757       <div class="tags">
11758
11759
11760         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>.
11761
11762
11763       </div>
11764     </div>
11765     <div class="padding"></div>
11766
11767     <div class="entry">
11768       <div class="title">
11769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="date">
11772         11th December 2010
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="body">
11775         <p>As I continue to explore
11776 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
11777 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
11778 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
11779
11780 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
11781 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
11782 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
11783 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
11784 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
11785 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
11786 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
11787 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
11788 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
11789 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
11790 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
11791 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
11792 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
11793 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
11794 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
11795 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
11796 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
11797 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
11798 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
11799 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
11800
11801 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
11802 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
11803 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
11804 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
11805 If the Skolelinux foundation
11806 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
11807 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
11808 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
11809 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
11810 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
11811 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
11812 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
11813 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
11814
11815 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
11816 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
11817 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
11818 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
11819 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
11820 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
11821 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
11822 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
11823 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
11824 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
11825 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
11826 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
11827 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
11828 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
11829 currencies.</p>
11830
11831 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
11832 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
11833 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
11834 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
11835 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
11836 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
11837 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
11838 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
11839 BitCoins.  Check out
11840 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
11841 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
11842 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
11843 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
11844 yet.</p>
11845
11846 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
11847 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
11848 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
11849 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
11850 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
11851
11852       </div>
11853       <div class="tags">
11854
11855
11856         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>.
11857
11858
11859       </div>
11860     </div>
11861     <div class="padding"></div>
11862
11863     <div class="entry">
11864       <div class="title">
11865         <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>
11866       </div>
11867       <div class="date">
11868         10th December 2010
11869       </div>
11870       <div class="body">
11871         <p>With this weeks lawless
11872 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
11873 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
11874 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
11875 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
11876 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
11877 A blog post from
11878 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
11879 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
11880 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
11881 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
11882 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
11883 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
11884 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
11885
11886 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
11887 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
11888 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
11889 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
11890 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
11891 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
11892 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
11893 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
11894 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
11895 Debian</a> soon.</p>
11896
11897 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
11898 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
11899 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
11900 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
11901 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
11902 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
11903 you can even get
11904 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
11905 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
11906 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
11907 on the current exchange rates.</p>
11908
11909 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
11910 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
11911 donations to the address
11912 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
11913
11914       </div>
11915       <div class="tags">
11916
11917
11918         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>.
11919
11920
11921       </div>
11922     </div>
11923     <div class="padding"></div>
11924
11925     <div class="entry">
11926       <div class="title">
11927         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
11928       </div>
11929       <div class="date">
11930          9th December 2010
11931       </div>
11932       <div class="body">
11933         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
11934 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
11935 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
11936 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
11937 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
11938 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
11939 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
11940 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
11941 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
11942 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
11943 operational.</p>
11944
11945 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
11946 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
11947 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
11948 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
11949 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
11950 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
11951 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
11952
11953       </div>
11954       <div class="tags">
11955
11956
11957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
11958
11959
11960       </div>
11961     </div>
11962     <div class="padding"></div>
11963
11964     <div class="entry">
11965       <div class="title">
11966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
11967       </div>
11968       <div class="date">
11969         29th November 2010
11970       </div>
11971       <div class="body">
11972         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11973 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
11974 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
11975 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
11976 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
11977 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
11978
11979 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
11980 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
11981 will hold its
11982 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
11983 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
11984 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
11985 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
11986 vote this year.</p>
11987
11988       </div>
11989       <div class="tags">
11990
11991
11992         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11993
11994
11995       </div>
11996     </div>
11997     <div class="padding"></div>
11998
11999     <div class="entry">
12000       <div class="title">
12001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
12002       </div>
12003       <div class="date">
12004         27th November 2010
12005       </div>
12006       <div class="body">
12007         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
12008 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
12009 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
12010 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
12011 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
12012 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
12013 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
12014 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
12015
12016 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
12017 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
12018 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
12019 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
12020 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
12021 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
12022 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
12023 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
12024 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
12025 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
12026 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
12027
12028 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
12029 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
12030 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
12031 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
12032 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
12033 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
12034 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
12035 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
12036 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
12037 what is going on.</p>
12038
12039       </div>
12040       <div class="tags">
12041
12042
12043         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>.
12044
12045
12046       </div>
12047     </div>
12048     <div class="padding"></div>
12049
12050     <div class="entry">
12051       <div class="title">
12052         <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>
12053       </div>
12054       <div class="date">
12055         22nd November 2010
12056       </div>
12057       <div class="body">
12058         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
12059 upgrade testing of the
12060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12061 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
12062 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
12063 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
12064
12065 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
12066
12067 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12068
12069 <blockquote><p>
12070   apache2.2-bin
12071   aptdaemon
12072   baobab
12073   binfmt-support
12074   browser-plugin-gnash
12075   cheese-common
12076   cli-common
12077   cups-pk-helper
12078   dmz-cursor-theme
12079   empathy
12080   empathy-common
12081   freedesktop-sound-theme
12082   freeglut3
12083   gconf-defaults-service
12084   gdm-themes
12085   gedit-plugins
12086   geoclue
12087   geoclue-hostip
12088   geoclue-localnet
12089   geoclue-manual
12090   geoclue-yahoo
12091   gnash
12092   gnash-common
12093   gnome
12094   gnome-backgrounds
12095   gnome-cards-data
12096   gnome-codec-install
12097   gnome-core
12098   gnome-desktop-environment
12099   gnome-disk-utility
12100   gnome-screenshot
12101   gnome-search-tool
12102   gnome-session-canberra
12103   gnome-system-log
12104   gnome-themes-extras
12105   gnome-themes-more
12106   gnome-user-share
12107   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12108   gstreamer0.10-tools
12109   gtk2-engines
12110   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12111   gtk2-engines-smooth
12112   hamster-applet
12113   libapache2-mod-dnssd
12114   libapr1
12115   libaprutil1
12116   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
12117   libaprutil1-ldap
12118   libart2.0-cil
12119   libboost-date-time1.42.0
12120   libboost-python1.42.0
12121   libboost-thread1.42.0
12122   libchamplain-0.4-0
12123   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
12124   libcheese-gtk18
12125   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12126   libcryptui0
12127   libdiscid0
12128   libelf1
12129   libepc-1.0-2
12130   libepc-common
12131   libepc-ui-1.0-2
12132   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12133   libfreerdp0
12134   libgconf2.0-cil
12135   libgdata-common
12136   libgdata7
12137   libgdu-gtk0
12138   libgee2
12139   libgeoclue0
12140   libgexiv2-0
12141   libgif4
12142   libglade2.0-cil
12143   libglib2.0-cil
12144   libgmime2.4-cil
12145   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12146   libgnome2.24-cil
12147   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
12148   libgpod-common
12149   libgpod4
12150   libgtk2.0-cil
12151   libgtkglext1
12152   libgtksourceview2.0-common
12153   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12154   libmono-addins0.2-cil
12155   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
12156   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12157   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
12158   libmono-posix2.0-cil
12159   libmono-security2.0-cil
12160   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12161   libmono-system2.0-cil
12162   libmtp8
12163   libmusicbrainz3-6
12164   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
12165   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
12166   libopal3.6.8
12167   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
12168   libpt2.6.7
12169   libpython2.6
12170   librpm1
12171   librpmio1
12172   libsdl1.2debian
12173   libsrtp0
12174   libssh-4
12175   libtelepathy-farsight0
12176   libtelepathy-glib0
12177   libtidy-0.99-0
12178   media-player-info
12179   mesa-utils
12180   mono-2.0-gac
12181   mono-gac
12182   mono-runtime
12183   nautilus-sendto
12184   nautilus-sendto-empathy
12185   p7zip-full
12186   pkg-config
12187   python-aptdaemon
12188   python-aptdaemon-gtk
12189   python-axiom
12190   python-beautifulsoup
12191   python-bugbuddy
12192   python-clientform
12193   python-coherence
12194   python-configobj
12195   python-crypto
12196   python-cupshelpers
12197   python-elementtree
12198   python-epsilon
12199   python-evolution
12200   python-feedparser
12201   python-gdata
12202   python-gdbm
12203   python-gst0.10
12204   python-gtkglext1
12205   python-gtksourceview2
12206   python-httplib2
12207   python-louie
12208   python-mako
12209   python-markupsafe
12210   python-mechanize
12211   python-nevow
12212   python-notify
12213   python-opengl
12214   python-openssl
12215   python-pam
12216   python-pkg-resources
12217   python-pyasn1
12218   python-pysqlite2
12219   python-rdflib
12220   python-serial
12221   python-tagpy
12222   python-twisted-bin
12223   python-twisted-conch
12224   python-twisted-core
12225   python-twisted-web
12226   python-utidylib
12227   python-webkit
12228   python-xdg
12229   python-zope.interface
12230   remmina
12231   remmina-plugin-data
12232   remmina-plugin-rdp
12233   remmina-plugin-vnc
12234   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12235   rhythmbox-plugins
12236   rpm-common
12237   rpm2cpio
12238   seahorse-plugins
12239   shotwell
12240   software-center
12241   system-config-printer-udev
12242   telepathy-gabble
12243   telepathy-mission-control-5
12244   telepathy-salut
12245   tomboy
12246   totem
12247   totem-coherence
12248   totem-mozilla
12249   totem-plugins
12250   transmission-common
12251   xdg-user-dirs
12252   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
12253   xserver-xephyr
12254 </p></blockquote>
12255
12256 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12257
12258 <blockquote><p>
12259   cheese
12260   ekiga
12261   eog
12262   epiphany-extensions
12263   evolution-exchange
12264   fast-user-switch-applet
12265   file-roller
12266   gcalctool
12267   gconf-editor
12268   gdm
12269   gedit
12270   gedit-common
12271   gnome-games
12272   gnome-games-data
12273   gnome-nettool
12274   gnome-system-tools
12275   gnome-themes
12276   gnuchess
12277   gucharmap
12278   guile-1.8-libs
12279   libavahi-ui0
12280   libdmx1
12281   libgalago3
12282   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12283   libgtksourceview2.0-0
12284   liblircclient0
12285   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
12286   libspeexdsp1
12287   libsvga1
12288   rhythmbox
12289   seahorse
12290   sound-juicer
12291   system-config-printer
12292   totem-common
12293   transmission-gtk
12294   vinagre
12295   vino
12296 </p></blockquote>
12297
12298 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12299
12300 <blockquote><p>
12301   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12302 </p></blockquote>
12303
12304 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12305
12306 <blockquote><p>
12307 [nothing]
12308 </p></blockquote>
12309
12310 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
12311
12312 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12313
12314 <blockquote><p>
12315   ksmserver
12316 </p></blockquote>
12317
12318 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12319
12320 <blockquote><p>
12321   kwin
12322   network-manager-kde
12323 </p></blockquote>
12324
12325 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12326
12327 <blockquote><p>
12328   arts
12329   dolphin
12330   freespacenotifier
12331   google-gadgets-gst
12332   google-gadgets-xul
12333   kappfinder
12334   kcalc
12335   kcharselect
12336   kde-core
12337   kde-plasma-desktop
12338   kde-standard
12339   kde-window-manager
12340   kdeartwork
12341   kdeartwork-emoticons
12342   kdeartwork-style
12343   kdeartwork-theme-icon
12344   kdebase
12345   kdebase-apps
12346   kdebase-workspace
12347   kdebase-workspace-bin
12348   kdebase-workspace-data
12349   kdeeject
12350   kdelibs
12351   kdeplasma-addons
12352   kdeutils
12353   kdewallpapers
12354   kdf
12355   kfloppy
12356   kgpg
12357   khelpcenter4
12358   kinfocenter
12359   konq-plugins-l10n
12360   konqueror-nsplugins
12361   kscreensaver
12362   kscreensaver-xsavers
12363   ktimer
12364   kwrite
12365   libgle3
12366   libkde4-ruby1.8
12367   libkonq5
12368   libkonq5-templates
12369   libnetpbm10
12370   libplasma-ruby
12371   libplasma-ruby1.8
12372   libqt4-ruby1.8
12373   marble-data
12374   marble-plugins
12375   netpbm
12376   nuvola-icon-theme
12377   plasma-dataengines-workspace
12378   plasma-desktop
12379   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
12380   plasma-runners-addons
12381   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
12382   plasma-scriptengine-python
12383   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
12384   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
12385   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
12386   plasma-scriptengines
12387   plasma-wallpapers-addons
12388   plasma-widget-folderview
12389   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12390   ruby
12391   sweeper
12392   update-notifier-kde
12393   xscreensaver-data-extra
12394   xscreensaver-gl
12395   xscreensaver-gl-extra
12396   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12397 </p></blockquote>
12398
12399 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12400
12401 <blockquote><p>
12402   ark
12403   google-gadgets-common
12404   google-gadgets-qt
12405   htdig
12406   kate
12407   kdebase-bin
12408   kdebase-data
12409   kdepasswd
12410   kfind
12411   klipper
12412   konq-plugins
12413   konqueror
12414   ksysguard
12415   ksysguardd
12416   libarchive1
12417   libcln6
12418   libeet1
12419   libeina-svn-06
12420   libggadget-1.0-0b
12421   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
12422   libgps19
12423   libkdecorations4
12424   libkephal4
12425   libkonq4
12426   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
12427   libkscreensaver5
12428   libksgrd4
12429   libksignalplotter4
12430   libkunitconversion4
12431   libkwineffects1a
12432   libmarblewidget4
12433   libntrack-qt4-1
12434   libntrack0
12435   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
12436   libplasmaclock4a
12437   libplasmagenericshell4
12438   libprocesscore4a
12439   libprocessui4a
12440   libqalculate5
12441   libqedje0a
12442   libqtruby4shared2
12443   libqzion0a
12444   libruby1.8
12445   libscim8c2a
12446   libsmokekdecore4-3
12447   libsmokekdeui4-3
12448   libsmokekfile3
12449   libsmokekhtml3
12450   libsmokekio3
12451   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
12452   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
12453   libsmokekparts3
12454   libsmokektexteditor3
12455   libsmokekutils3
12456   libsmokenepomuk3
12457   libsmokephonon3
12458   libsmokeplasma3
12459   libsmokeqtcore4-3
12460   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
12461   libsmokeqtgui4-3
12462   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
12463   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
12464   libsmokeqtscript4-3
12465   libsmokeqtsql4-3
12466   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
12467   libsmokeqttest4-3
12468   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
12469   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
12470   libsmokeqtxml4-3
12471   libsmokesolid3
12472   libsmokesoprano3
12473   libtaskmanager4a
12474   libtidy-0.99-0
12475   libweather-ion4a
12476   libxklavier16
12477   libxxf86misc1
12478   okteta
12479   oxygencursors
12480   plasma-dataengines-addons
12481   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
12482   plasma-widget-lancelot
12483   plasma-widgets-addons
12484   plasma-widgets-workspace
12485   polkit-kde-1
12486   ruby1.8
12487   systemsettings
12488   update-notifier-common
12489 </p></blockquote>
12490
12491 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
12492 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
12493 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
12494 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
12495
12496       </div>
12497       <div class="tags">
12498
12499
12500         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>.
12501
12502
12503       </div>
12504     </div>
12505     <div class="padding"></div>
12506
12507     <div class="entry">
12508       <div class="title">
12509         <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>
12510       </div>
12511       <div class="date">
12512         22nd November 2010
12513       </div>
12514       <div class="body">
12515         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
12516 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
12517 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
12518 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
12519 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
12520 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
12521 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
12522 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
12523 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
12524
12525 <p>I found
12526 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
12527 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
12528 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
12529 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
12530 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
12531 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
12532
12533 <pre>
12534 #!/bin/sh
12535
12536 # Based on
12537 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
12538
12539 set -e
12540 set -x
12541
12542 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
12543     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
12544     exit 1
12545 else
12546     host="$1"
12547 fi
12548
12549 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
12550     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
12551     exit 1
12552 fi
12553
12554 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
12555 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
12556 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
12557 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
12558
12559 img=$host.img
12560 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
12561 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
12562
12563 parted $img mklabel msdos
12564 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
12565 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
12566 parted $img set 1 boot on
12567
12568 modprobe dm-mod
12569 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
12570 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
12571
12572 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
12573 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
12574 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
12575
12576 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
12577 losetup -d /dev/loop0
12578 </pre>
12579
12580 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
12581 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
12582
12583 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
12584 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
12585 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
12586 seem to work just fine.</p>
12587
12588       </div>
12589       <div class="tags">
12590
12591
12592         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>.
12593
12594
12595       </div>
12596     </div>
12597     <div class="padding"></div>
12598
12599     <div class="entry">
12600       <div class="title">
12601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
12602       </div>
12603       <div class="date">
12604         20th November 2010
12605       </div>
12606       <div class="body">
12607         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
12608 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12609 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
12610 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
12611
12612 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
12613 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
12614 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
12615
12616 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
12617
12618 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12619
12620 <blockquote><p>
12621   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
12622   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
12623   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
12624   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
12625   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
12626   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
12627   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
12628   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
12629   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
12630   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
12631   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12632   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12633   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
12634   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
12635   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
12636   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
12637   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12638   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
12639   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12640   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
12641   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
12642   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12643   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
12644   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
12645   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
12646   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12647   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12648   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
12649   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12650   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
12651   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
12652   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12653   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
12654   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
12655   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
12656   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
12657   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
12658   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
12659   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
12660   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
12661   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
12662   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
12663   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
12664   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
12665   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
12666   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
12667   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
12668   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
12669   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
12670   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
12671   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
12672   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
12673   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12674   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
12675   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
12676   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
12677   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
12678   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
12679   zip
12680 </p></blockquote>
12681
12682 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
12683
12684 <blockquote><p>
12685   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
12686   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
12687   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
12688   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
12689   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
12690   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
12691   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
12692   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
12693   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
12694   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
12695   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
12696   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12697   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12698   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12699   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12700   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
12701   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12702   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
12703   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
12704   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
12705   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
12706   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
12707   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12708   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
12709   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
12710   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
12711   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
12712   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
12713   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
12714 </p></blockquote>
12715
12716 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12717
12718 <blockquote><p>
12719   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12720 </p></blockquote>
12721
12722 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12723
12724 <blockquote><p>
12725 [nothing]
12726 </p></blockquote>
12727
12728 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
12729
12730 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12731
12732 <blockquote><p>
12733   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
12734   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12735   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
12736   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
12737   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
12738   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
12739   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12740   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
12741   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
12742   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12743   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
12744   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
12745   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
12746   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
12747   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
12748   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
12749   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
12750   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
12751   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
12752   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
12753   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
12754   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
12755   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
12756   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
12757   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
12758   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
12759   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
12760   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
12761   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
12762   ttf-sazanami-gothic
12763 </p></blockquote>
12764
12765 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12766
12767 <blockquote><p>
12768   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
12769   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
12770   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
12771   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
12772   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
12773   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
12774   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
12775   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
12776   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
12777   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
12778   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
12779   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
12780   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
12781   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
12782   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12783   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12784   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
12785   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
12786   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12787   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
12788   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12789   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
12790   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12791   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12792   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
12793   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
12794   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
12795   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
12796   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
12797   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
12798   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
12799   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
12800   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
12801 </p></blockquote>
12802
12803 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12804
12805 <blockquote><p>
12806   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
12807   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
12808   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
12809   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
12810   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12811   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
12812   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12813 </p></blockquote>
12814
12815 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12816
12817 <blockquote><p>
12818   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
12819 </p></blockquote>
12820
12821       </div>
12822       <div class="tags">
12823
12824
12825         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>.
12826
12827
12828       </div>
12829     </div>
12830     <div class="padding"></div>
12831
12832     <div class="entry">
12833       <div class="title">
12834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
12835       </div>
12836       <div class="date">
12837         20th November 2010
12838       </div>
12839       <div class="body">
12840         <p>Answering
12841 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
12842 call from the Gnash project</a> for
12843 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
12844 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
12845 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
12846 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
12847 releases out more often.</p>
12848
12849 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
12850 I have considered setting up a <a
12851 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
12852 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
12853 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
12854 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
12855 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
12856 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
12857 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
12858 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
12859 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
12860 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
12861 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
12862 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
12863
12864       </div>
12865       <div class="tags">
12866
12867
12868         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>.
12869
12870
12871       </div>
12872     </div>
12873     <div class="padding"></div>
12874
12875     <div class="entry">
12876       <div class="title">
12877         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
12878       </div>
12879       <div class="date">
12880          9th November 2010
12881       </div>
12882       <div class="body">
12883         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
12884
12885 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
12886 3D linked in from
12887 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
12888 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
12889
12890       </div>
12891       <div class="tags">
12892
12893
12894         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>.
12895
12896
12897       </div>
12898     </div>
12899     <div class="padding"></div>
12900
12901     <div class="entry">
12902       <div class="title">
12903         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
12904       </div>
12905       <div class="date">
12906          7th November 2010
12907       </div>
12908       <div class="body">
12909         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
12910 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
12911 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
12912 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
12913 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
12914 working using this DVD.</p>
12915
12916 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
12917 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
12918 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
12919 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
12920 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
12921 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
12922 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
12923
12924 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
12925 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
12926 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
12927 Debian archive.</p>
12928
12929 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
12930 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
12931 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
12932 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
12933 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
12934 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
12935 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
12936 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
12937 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
12938 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
12939 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
12940 free X driver should work.</p>
12941
12942 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
12943 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
12944 DVD more useful again.</p>
12945
12946       </div>
12947       <div class="tags">
12948
12949
12950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12951
12952
12953       </div>
12954     </div>
12955     <div class="padding"></div>
12956
12957     <div class="entry">
12958       <div class="title">
12959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
12960       </div>
12961       <div class="date">
12962         24th October 2010
12963       </div>
12964       <div class="body">
12965         <p>Some updates.</p>
12966
12967 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
12968 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
12969 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
12970 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
12971 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
12972 :)</p>
12973
12974 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
12975 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
12976 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
12977 It is called
12978 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
12979 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
12980 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
12981 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
12982 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
12983 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
12984
12985 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
12986 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
12987 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
12988 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
12989 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
12990 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
12991 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
12992 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
12993 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
12994 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
12995
12996       </div>
12997       <div class="tags">
12998
12999
13000         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>.
13001
13002
13003       </div>
13004     </div>
13005     <div class="padding"></div>
13006
13007     <div class="entry">
13008       <div class="title">
13009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
13010       </div>
13011       <div class="date">
13012         19th October 2010
13013       </div>
13014       <div class="body">
13015         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
13016 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
13017 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
13018 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
13019 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
13020 AVM2 flash files.</p>
13021
13022 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
13023 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
13024 following text:</P>
13025
13026 <p><blockquote>
13027
13028   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
13029   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
13030
13031   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
13032
13033   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
13034
13035   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
13036   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
13037   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
13038   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
13039   days. The project web page is available from
13040   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
13041   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
13042   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
13043
13044   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
13045   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
13046   to get this to happen.</p>
13047
13048   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
13049   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
13050
13051 </blockquote></p>
13052
13053 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
13054 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
13055 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
13056 :)</p>
13057
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="tags">
13060
13061
13062         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13063
13064
13065       </div>
13066     </div>
13067     <div class="padding"></div>
13068
13069     <div class="entry">
13070       <div class="title">
13071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
13072       </div>
13073       <div class="date">
13074          9th October 2010
13075       </div>
13076       <div class="body">
13077         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
13078 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
13079 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
13080 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
13081 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
13082 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
13083 robots.</p>
13084
13085 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
13086 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
13087 a few less important features too.</p>
13088
13089 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
13090 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
13091 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
13092 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
13093
13094 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
13095 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
13096 source or binary package:</p>
13097
13098 <p><ul>
13099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
13100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
13101 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
13102 </ul></p>
13103
13104 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
13105 please let me know.</p>
13106
13107       </div>
13108       <div class="tags">
13109
13110
13111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
13112
13113
13114       </div>
13115     </div>
13116     <div class="padding"></div>
13117
13118     <div class="entry">
13119       <div class="title">
13120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
13121       </div>
13122       <div class="date">
13123          3rd October 2010
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="body">
13126         <p><ul>
13127
13128 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
13129 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
13130
13131 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
13132 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
13133 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
13134
13135 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
13136 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
13137 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
13138 simple setup.
13139
13140 </ul></p>
13141
13142       </div>
13143       <div class="tags">
13144
13145
13146         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13147
13148
13149       </div>
13150     </div>
13151     <div class="padding"></div>
13152
13153     <div class="entry">
13154       <div class="title">
13155         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
13156       </div>
13157       <div class="date">
13158          9th September 2010
13159       </div>
13160       <div class="body">
13161         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
13162 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
13163 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
13164 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
13165 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
13166 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
13167 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
13168 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
13169 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
13170
13171 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
13172 written:</p>
13173
13174 <blockquote>
13175 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
13176 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
13177 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
13178 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
13179 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
13180
13181 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
13182 standard.</p>
13183 </blockquote>
13184
13185 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
13186 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
13187 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
13188 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
13189
13190 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
13191 read
13192 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
13193 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
13194 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
13195 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
13196 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
13197 the issue.  The solution is to support the
13198 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
13199 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
13200 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
13201
13202       </div>
13203       <div class="tags">
13204
13205
13206         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13207
13208
13209       </div>
13210     </div>
13211     <div class="padding"></div>
13212
13213     <div class="entry">
13214       <div class="title">
13215         <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>
13216       </div>
13217       <div class="date">
13218          4th September 2010
13219       </div>
13220       <div class="body">
13221         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
13222 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
13223 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
13224 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
13225 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
13226 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
13227 installed.</p>
13228
13229 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
13230 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
13231 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
13232 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
13233 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13234 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
13235 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
13236 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
13237 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
13238
13239 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
13240 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
13241 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
13242 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
13243 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
13244 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
13245 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
13246 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
13247 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
13248 pages they want to visit.</p>
13249
13250 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
13251 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
13252 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
13253 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
13254 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
13255 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
13256 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
13257 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
13258 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
13259 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
13260 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
13261
13262       </div>
13263       <div class="tags">
13264
13265
13266         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>.
13267
13268
13269       </div>
13270     </div>
13271     <div class="padding"></div>
13272
13273     <div class="entry">
13274       <div class="title">
13275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
13276       </div>
13277       <div class="date">
13278          1st September 2010
13279       </div>
13280       <div class="body">
13281         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
13282 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
13283 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
13284 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
13285 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
13286 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
13287 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
13288 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
13289 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
13290 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
13291 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
13292 drive around.</p>
13293
13294 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
13295 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
13296
13297 <p><pre>
13298 use Spykee;
13299 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
13300 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
13301 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
13302 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
13303 $spykee->left();
13304 sleep 2;
13305 $spykee->right();
13306 sleep 2;
13307 $spykee->forward();
13308 sleep 2;
13309 $spykee->back();
13310 sleep 2;
13311 $spykee->stop();
13312 </pre></p>
13313
13314 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
13315 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
13316 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
13317 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
13318 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
13319 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
13320 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
13321 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
13322 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
13323 going. :).</p>
13324
13325 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
13326 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
13327 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
13328 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
13329
13330       </div>
13331       <div class="tags">
13332
13333
13334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
13335
13336
13337       </div>
13338     </div>
13339     <div class="padding"></div>
13340
13341     <div class="entry">
13342       <div class="title">
13343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
13344       </div>
13345       <div class="date">
13346         30th August 2010
13347       </div>
13348       <div class="body">
13349         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
13350 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
13351 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
13352 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
13353 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
13354 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
13355 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
13356
13357 <pre>
13358 % ln foo bar
13359 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
13360 %
13361 </pre>
13362
13363 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
13364 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
13365 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
13366 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
13367 nevertheless. :)</p>
13368
13369 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
13370 git from
13371 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
13372
13373       </div>
13374       <div class="tags">
13375
13376
13377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13378
13379
13380       </div>
13381     </div>
13382     <div class="padding"></div>
13383
13384     <div class="entry">
13385       <div class="title">
13386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
13387       </div>
13388       <div class="date">
13389         26th August 2010
13390       </div>
13391       <div class="body">
13392         <p>My file system sematics program
13393 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
13394 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
13395 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
13396 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
13397 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
13398 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
13399 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
13400 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
13401 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
13402 script:</p>
13403
13404 <pre>
13405 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
13406   mode_t retval = 0;
13407   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
13408   if (-1 != fd) {
13409     unlink(name);
13410     struct stat statbuf;
13411     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
13412       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
13413     }
13414     close(fd);
13415   }
13416   return retval;
13417 }
13418
13419 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
13420 int test_umask(void) {
13421   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
13422
13423   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
13424   mode_t newmode;
13425   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13426     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
13427            newmode);
13428   }
13429   umask(007);
13430   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13431     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
13432            newmode);
13433   }
13434
13435   umask (orig_umask);
13436   return 0;
13437 }
13438
13439 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13440   [...]
13441   test_umask();
13442   return 0;
13443 }
13444 </pre>
13445
13446 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
13447
13448 <pre>
13449 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13450 info: testing symlink creation
13451 info: testing subdirectory creation
13452 info: testing fcntl locking
13453   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13454   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13455   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13456   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13457   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13458   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13459 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13460 </pre>
13461
13462 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
13463 result:</p>
13464
13465 <pre>
13466 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13467 info: testing symlink creation
13468 info: testing subdirectory creation
13469 info: testing fcntl locking
13470   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13471   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13472   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13473   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13474   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13475   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13476 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13477   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
13478   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
13479 </pre>
13480
13481 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
13482 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
13483 directory.</p>
13484
13485 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
13486 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
13487
13488 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
13489 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
13490 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
13491
13492       </div>
13493       <div class="tags">
13494
13495
13496         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13497
13498
13499       </div>
13500     </div>
13501     <div class="padding"></div>
13502
13503     <div class="entry">
13504       <div class="title">
13505         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
13506       </div>
13507       <div class="date">
13508         15th August 2010
13509       </div>
13510       <div class="body">
13511         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
13512 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
13513 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
13514 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
13515 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
13516 long time.</p>
13517
13518       </div>
13519       <div class="tags">
13520
13521
13522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13523
13524
13525       </div>
13526     </div>
13527     <div class="padding"></div>
13528
13529     <div class="entry">
13530       <div class="title">
13531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
13532       </div>
13533       <div class="date">
13534          9th August 2010
13535       </div>
13536       <div class="body">
13537         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
13538 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
13539 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
13540 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
13541 generated configuration.</p>
13542
13543 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
13544 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
13545 without any manual configuration.</p>
13546
13547 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
13548 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
13549 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
13550 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
13551 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
13552 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
13553 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
13554 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
13555 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
13556 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
13557 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
13558 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
13559 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
13560 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
13561 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
13562 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
13563 use.</p>
13564
13565 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
13566 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
13567 working properly out of the box:</p>
13568
13569 <ul>
13570 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
13571 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
13572 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
13573 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
13574 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
13575 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
13576 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
13577 </ul>
13578
13579 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
13580
13581 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
13582 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
13583 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
13584 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
13585 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
13586
13587 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
13588 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
13589 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
13590 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
13591 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
13592 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
13593 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
13594 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
13595
13596 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
13597 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
13598 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
13599 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
13600 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
13601 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
13602 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
13603 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
13604 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
13605 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
13606 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
13607 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
13608 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
13609 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
13610 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
13611 current DNS domain is used.</p>
13612
13613 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
13614 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
13615 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
13616 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
13617 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
13618 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
13619 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
13620 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
13621 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
13622 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
13623 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
13624 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
13625 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
13626
13627 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
13628 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
13629 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
13630 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
13631 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
13632 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
13633 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
13634 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
13635 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
13636 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
13637 do for now. :)</p>
13638
13639 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
13640 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
13641 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
13642 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
13643 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
13644 yet.</p>
13645
13646 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
13647 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13648
13649 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
13650 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
13651 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
13652 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
13653
13654       </div>
13655       <div class="tags">
13656
13657
13658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13659
13660
13661       </div>
13662     </div>
13663     <div class="padding"></div>
13664
13665     <div class="entry">
13666       <div class="title">
13667         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
13668       </div>
13669       <div class="date">
13670          8th August 2010
13671       </div>
13672       <div class="body">
13673         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
13674 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
13675 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
13676 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
13677 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
13678 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
13679 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
13680
13681 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
13682 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
13683 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
13684 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
13685 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
13686 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
13687 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
13688
13689 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
13690 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
13691 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
13692 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
13693 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
13694
13695 <pre>
13696 /*
13697  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
13698  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
13699  * directory.
13700  * License: GPL v2 or later
13701  *
13702  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
13703  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
13704 */
13705
13706 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
13707 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
13708 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
13709
13710 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
13711
13712 #include &lt;errno.h>
13713 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
13714 #include &lt;stdio.h>
13715 #include &lt;string.h>
13716 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
13717 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
13718 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
13719 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
13720 #include &lt;unistd.h>
13721
13722 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
13723 /*
13724  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
13725  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
13726  * below.
13727  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
13728  */
13729 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
13730 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
13731   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
13732 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
13733   char *zErrMsg;
13734   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
13735   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
13736   unlink(name);
13737   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
13738   if( rc ){
13739     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
13740     sqlite3_close(db);
13741     return -1;
13742   }
13743
13744   /* create tables */
13745   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
13746   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
13747     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
13748     sqlite3_close(db);
13749     return -1;
13750   }
13751   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
13752   sqlite3_close(db);
13753   return 0;
13754 }
13755 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
13756
13757 /*
13758  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
13759  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
13760  * done in the sqlite3 library.
13761  * See also
13762  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
13763  * POSIX specification
13764  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
13765  */
13766 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
13767   struct flock fl;
13768   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
13769   unlink(name);
13770   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
13771   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
13772
13773   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
13774   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
13775   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13776   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13777   fl.l_len    = 1;
13778   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
13779   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13780
13781   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
13782   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
13783   fl.l_len    = 510;
13784   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
13785   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13786
13787   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13788   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13789   fl.l_len    = 1;
13790   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
13791   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13792
13793   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13794   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13795   fl.l_len    = 1;
13796   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
13797   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13798
13799   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
13800   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
13801   fl.l_len    = 510;
13802   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13803
13804   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
13805   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13806   fl.l_len    = 2;
13807   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
13808   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13809
13810   close(fd);
13811   return 0;
13812 }
13813
13814 /*
13815  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
13816  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
13817  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
13818  * slowing down file operations.
13819  */
13820 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
13821 #define LEVELS 5
13822   char *path = strdup("test");
13823   char *dirs[LEVELS];
13824   int level;
13825   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
13826   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
13827     char *newpath = NULL;
13828     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
13829       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
13830              path, strerror(errno));
13831       break;
13832     }
13833     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
13834     free(path);
13835     path = newpath;
13836   }
13837   return 0;
13838 }
13839
13840 /*
13841  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
13842  * KDE.
13843  */
13844 int test_symlinks(void) {
13845   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
13846   unlink("symlink");
13847   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
13848     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
13849   return 0;
13850 }
13851
13852 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13853   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
13854   test_symlinks();
13855   test_subdirectory_creation();
13856 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
13857   test_sqlite_open();
13858 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
13859   test_gcompris_locking();
13860   return 0;
13861 }
13862 </pre>
13863
13864 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
13865 this:</p>
13866
13867 <pre>
13868 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13869 info: testing symlink creation
13870 info: testing subdirectory creation
13871 info: sqlite worked
13872 info: testing fcntl locking
13873   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13874   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13875   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13876   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13877   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13878   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13879 </pre>
13880
13881 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
13882 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
13883 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
13884 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
13885 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
13886 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
13887 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
13888 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
13889
13890 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
13891 it. :)</p>
13892
13893 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
13894 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
13895 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
13896
13897       </div>
13898       <div class="tags">
13899
13900
13901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13902
13903
13904       </div>
13905     </div>
13906     <div class="padding"></div>
13907
13908     <div class="entry">
13909       <div class="title">
13910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
13911       </div>
13912       <div class="date">
13913          7th August 2010
13914       </div>
13915       <div class="body">
13916         <p>A few days ago, I
13917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
13918 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
13919 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
13920 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
13921 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
13922 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
13923 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
13924 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
13925 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
13926
13927 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
13928 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
13929 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
13930 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
13931 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
13932 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
13933 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
13934 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
13935 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
13936 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
13937 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
13938 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
13939 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
13940 gave it a IP address.</p>
13941
13942 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
13943 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
13944 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
13945 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
13946 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
13947 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
13948 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
13949 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
13950
13951 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
13952 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
13953 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
13954 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
13955 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
13956 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
13957
13958 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
13959 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
13960 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
13961 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
13962 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
13963 with UID and GID values.</p>
13964
13965 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
13966 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13967
13968       </div>
13969       <div class="tags">
13970
13971
13972         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13973
13974
13975       </div>
13976     </div>
13977     <div class="padding"></div>
13978
13979     <div class="entry">
13980       <div class="title">
13981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
13982       </div>
13983       <div class="date">
13984          3rd August 2010
13985       </div>
13986       <div class="body">
13987         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
13988 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
13989 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
13990 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
13991 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
13992 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
13993 servers.</p>
13994
13995 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
13996 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
13997 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
13998 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
13999 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
14000 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
14001 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
14002 .uio.no.</p>
14003
14004 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
14005 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
14006 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
14007 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
14008 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
14009 university servers.</p>
14010
14011 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
14012 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
14013 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
14014 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
14015 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
14016 uses.</p>
14017
14018       </div>
14019       <div class="tags">
14020
14021
14022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14023
14024
14025       </div>
14026     </div>
14027     <div class="padding"></div>
14028
14029     <div class="entry">
14030       <div class="title">
14031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
14032       </div>
14033       <div class="date">
14034         27th July 2010
14035       </div>
14036       <div class="body">
14037         <p>I discovered this while doing
14038 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14039 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
14040 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14041 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14042 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
14043
14044 <p>An example is from todays
14045 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14046 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14047 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
14048 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14049 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14050 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14051 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
14052
14053 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
14054
14055 <blockquote><pre>
14056 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14057  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
14058   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
14059 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14060  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14061 </pre></blockquote>
14062
14063 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14064 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
14065 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14066 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14067 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14068 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14069 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14070 of dependency loops.</p>
14071
14072 <p>Thanks to
14073 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14074 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
14075 dependencies
14076 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14077 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
14078
14079 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14080 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
14081 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
14082 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14083 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14084 it.</p>
14085
14086       </div>
14087       <div class="tags">
14088
14089
14090         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>.
14091
14092
14093       </div>
14094     </div>
14095     <div class="padding"></div>
14096
14097     <div class="entry">
14098       <div class="title">
14099         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
14100       </div>
14101       <div class="date">
14102         27th July 2010
14103       </div>
14104       <div class="body">
14105         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
14106 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
14107 completed.</p>
14108
14109 <blockquote>
14110 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
14111 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
14112 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
14113 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
14114 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
14115 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
14116 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
14117 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
14118
14119 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
14120 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
14121 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
14122
14123 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
14124 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
14125 much.</p>
14126
14127 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
14128
14129 <ul>
14130 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
14131 <ul>
14132   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
14133          combination with some new artwork
14134   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
14135   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
14136   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
14137   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
14138   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
14139   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
14140   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
14141   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
14142   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
14143 </ul></li>
14144 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
14145     Enabled for:
14146 <ul>
14147   <li>PAM
14148   <li>LDAP
14149   <li>IMAP
14150   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
14151 </ul>
14152 </li>
14153 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
14154 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
14155     fetched from LDAP.</li>
14156 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
14157 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
14158 </ul>
14159 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
14160
14161 <ul>
14162 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
14163     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
14164     for testing.</li>
14165 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
14166     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
14167     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
14168 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
14169 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
14170 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
14171 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
14172     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
14173 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
14174     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
14175     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
14176 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
14177     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
14178     and help out with translations.</li>
14179 </ul>
14180
14181 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
14182
14183 <ul>
14184 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
14185 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
14186 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14187 </ul>
14188 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
14189
14190 <ul>
14191 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
14192 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
14193 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14194 </ul>
14195
14196 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
14197 get closer to the final release.</p>
14198
14199 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
14200
14201 <ul>
14202 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14203 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14204 </ul>
14205
14206 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
14207 <ul>
14208 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14209 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14210 </ul>
14211 <p>How to report bugs:
14212 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
14213
14214 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
14215 </blockquote>
14216
14217       </div>
14218       <div class="tags">
14219
14220
14221         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14222
14223
14224       </div>
14225     </div>
14226     <div class="padding"></div>
14227
14228     <div class="entry">
14229       <div class="title">
14230         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
14231       </div>
14232       <div class="date">
14233         25th July 2010
14234       </div>
14235       <div class="body">
14236         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
14237 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
14238 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
14239 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
14240 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
14241
14242 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
14243 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
14244 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
14245 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
14246 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
14247 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
14248 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
14249
14250 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
14251 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
14252 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
14253 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
14254 up. :)</p>
14255
14256 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
14257 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
14258 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
14259
14260 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
14261 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
14262 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
14263 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
14264 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
14265 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
14266 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
14267 release another day.</p>
14268
14269 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
14270 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14271
14272       </div>
14273       <div class="tags">
14274
14275
14276         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
14277
14278
14279       </div>
14280     </div>
14281     <div class="padding"></div>
14282
14283     <div class="entry">
14284       <div class="title">
14285         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
14286       </div>
14287       <div class="date">
14288         18th July 2010
14289       </div>
14290       <div class="body">
14291         <p>Thanks to
14292 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
14293 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
14294 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
14295 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
14296 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
14297 only available from the development server, until more experience is
14298 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
14299
14300 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
14301 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
14302 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
14303 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
14304 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
14305 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
14306 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
14307
14308       </div>
14309       <div class="tags">
14310
14311
14312         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14313
14314
14315       </div>
14316     </div>
14317     <div class="padding"></div>
14318
14319     <div class="entry">
14320       <div class="title">
14321         <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>
14322       </div>
14323       <div class="date">
14324         17th July 2010
14325       </div>
14326       <div class="body">
14327         <p>This is a
14328 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
14329 on my
14330 <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
14331 work</a> on
14332 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14333 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
14334
14335 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14336 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14337 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
14338 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
14339
14340 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14341 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14342 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
14343
14344 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
14345
14346 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14347 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14348 the web.
14349
14350 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14351 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14352 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14353 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14354 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14355 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
14356
14357 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14358 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14359 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14360 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14361 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14362 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
14363 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14364 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14365 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14366 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14367 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14368 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
14369 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14370 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14371 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
14372 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
14373
14374 <blockquote><pre>
14375 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14376   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14377   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14378   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14379   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14380   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14381   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14382
14383 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14384   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14385   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14386   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14387   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14388   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14389 </pre></blockquote>
14390
14391 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14392 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14393 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
14394 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14395 also exist.</p>
14396
14397 <blockquote><pre>
14398 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14399 objectclass: top
14400 objectclass: dnsdomain
14401 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14402 dc: tjener
14403 arecord: 10.0.2.2
14404 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14405
14406 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14407 objectclass: top
14408 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14409 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14410 dc: 2
14411 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14412 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14413 </pre></blockquote>
14414
14415 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
14416 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14417 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14418 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14419 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14420 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14421 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
14422 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
14423 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14424 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14425 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14426 instead.</p>
14427
14428 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14429 like this:</p>
14430
14431 <blockquote><pre>
14432 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14433   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14434   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14435   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14436   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14437   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14438
14439 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14440   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14441 </pre></blockquote>
14442
14443 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14444 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14445 reverse lookups.</p>
14446
14447 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14448 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14449 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
14450 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
14451
14452 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
14453 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
14454 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
14455
14456 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
14457 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
14458 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
14459 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
14460 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
14461
14462 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
14463 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
14464 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
14465 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
14466 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
14467
14468 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
14469 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
14470 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
14471 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
14472 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
14473 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
14474
14475 <blockquote><pre>
14476 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
14477     SUP top
14478     AUXILIARY
14479     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
14480           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
14481           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
14482           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
14483           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
14484     ))
14485 </pre></blockquote>
14486
14487 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
14488 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
14489 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
14490 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
14491 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
14492 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
14493
14494 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
14495
14496 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
14497 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
14498 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
14499 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
14500 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
14501
14502 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
14503 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
14504 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
14505 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
14506
14507 <blockquote><pre>
14508 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
14509 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
14510 </pre></blockquote>
14511
14512 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
14513 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
14514 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
14515 search result is this entry:</p>
14516
14517 <blockquote><pre>
14518 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14519 cn: dhcp
14520 objectClass: top
14521 objectClass: dhcpServer
14522 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14523 </pre></blockquote>
14524
14525 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
14526 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
14527 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
14528 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
14529 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
14530 The search result is this entry:</p>
14531
14532 <blockquote><pre>
14533 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14534 cn: DHCP Config
14535 objectClass: top
14536 objectClass: dhcpService
14537 objectClass: dhcpOptions
14538 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14539 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
14540 dhcpStatements: authoritative
14541 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
14542 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
14543 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
14544 </pre></blockquote>
14545
14546 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
14547 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
14548 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
14549 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
14550 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
14551 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
14552 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
14553 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
14554 related computer objects.</p>
14555
14556 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
14557 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
14558 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
14559 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
14560 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
14561 like:</p>
14562
14563 <blockquote><pre>
14564 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14565 cn: hostname
14566 objectClass: top
14567 objectClass: dhcpHost
14568 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14569 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
14570 </pre></blockquote>
14571
14572 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
14573 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
14574 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
14575 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
14576 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
14577 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
14578 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
14579 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
14580 structural object class.
14581
14582 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14583
14584 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
14585 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
14586 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
14587 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
14588 in the configuration.</p>
14589
14590 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
14591 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
14592 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
14593 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
14594 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
14595 structure.</p>
14596
14597 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
14598 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
14599
14600 <blockquote><pre>
14601 ou=services
14602   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
14603     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
14604     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14605       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14606         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14607     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14608       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14609         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14610     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
14611       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
14612 </pre></blockquote>
14613
14614 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
14615 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
14616 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
14617 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
14618
14619 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
14620 like this:</p>
14621
14622 <blockquote><pre>
14623 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14624 dc: hostname
14625 objectClass: top
14626 objectClass: dhcpHost
14627 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14628 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
14629 associateddomain: hostname.intern
14630 arecord: 10.11.12.13
14631 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14632 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
14633 </pre></blockquote>
14634
14635 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
14636 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
14637 auxiliary object class.</p>
14638
14639       </div>
14640       <div class="tags">
14641
14642
14643         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>.
14644
14645
14646       </div>
14647     </div>
14648     <div class="padding"></div>
14649
14650     <div class="entry">
14651       <div class="title">
14652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
14653       </div>
14654       <div class="date">
14655         14th July 2010
14656       </div>
14657       <div class="body">
14658         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
14659 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
14660 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
14661 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
14662 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
14663
14664 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
14665 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
14666
14667 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
14668 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
14669 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
14670 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
14671 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
14672 to a slave DNS server.</p>
14673
14674 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
14675 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
14676 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
14677 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
14678 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
14679 seem to work.</p>
14680
14681 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
14682 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
14683 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
14684 this:</p>
14685
14686 <blockquote><pre>
14687   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14688   cn: hostname
14689   objectClass: dhcphost
14690   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14691   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
14692   associateddomain: hostname.intern
14693   arecord: 10.11.12.13
14694   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14695   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
14696   ldapconfigsound: Y
14697 </pre></blockquote>
14698
14699 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
14700 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
14701 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
14702 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
14703
14704 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
14705 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
14706 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
14707 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
14708 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
14709 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
14710 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
14711 might be a good place to put it.</p>
14712
14713 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14714 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14715
14716       </div>
14717       <div class="tags">
14718
14719
14720         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>.
14721
14722
14723       </div>
14724     </div>
14725     <div class="padding"></div>
14726
14727     <div class="entry">
14728       <div class="title">
14729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
14730       </div>
14731       <div class="date">
14732         11th July 2010
14733       </div>
14734       <div class="body">
14735         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
14736 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
14737 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
14738 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
14739
14740 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
14741 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
14742 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
14743 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
14744 LTSP clients.</p>
14745
14746 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
14747 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
14748 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
14749
14750 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
14751 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
14752 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
14753
14754 <blockquote><pre>
14755 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
14756 #
14757 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
14758 #
14759 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
14760 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
14761 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
14762 #
14763 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
14764 # existence of attribute names.
14765 #
14766 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
14767 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
14768 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
14769 #
14770 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
14771 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
14772 #
14773 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
14774 #     SUP top
14775 #     AUXILIARY
14776 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
14777
14778 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
14779 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
14780     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
14781     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
14782         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
14783         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
14784             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
14785             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
14786             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
14787             # bass value on to clients
14788             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
14789         done
14790     done
14791 fi
14792 </pre></blockquote>
14793
14794 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
14795 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
14796 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
14797 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
14798 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
14799
14800 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14801 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14802
14803 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
14804 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
14805 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
14806 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
14807 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
14808 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
14809
14810       </div>
14811       <div class="tags">
14812
14813
14814         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>.
14815
14816
14817       </div>
14818     </div>
14819     <div class="padding"></div>
14820
14821     <div class="entry">
14822       <div class="title">
14823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
14824       </div>
14825       <div class="date">
14826          9th July 2010
14827       </div>
14828       <div class="body">
14829         <p>Since
14830 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
14831 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
14832 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
14833 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
14834 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
14835 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
14836 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
14837 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
14838 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
14839 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
14840 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
14841 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
14842 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
14843
14844       </div>
14845       <div class="tags">
14846
14847
14848         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>.
14849
14850
14851       </div>
14852     </div>
14853     <div class="padding"></div>
14854
14855     <div class="entry">
14856       <div class="title">
14857         <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>
14858       </div>
14859       <div class="date">
14860          3rd July 2010
14861       </div>
14862       <div class="body">
14863         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
14864 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
14865 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
14866 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
14867 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
14868 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
14869 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
14870 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
14871
14872 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
14873 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
14874 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
14875 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
14876 publish the difference.</p>
14877
14878 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14879
14880 <blockquote><p>
14881   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14882   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
14883   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
14884   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14885   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
14886   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
14887   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
14888   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
14889 </p></blockquote>
14890
14891 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14892
14893 <blockquote><p>
14894   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
14895   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
14896   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
14897   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
14898   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
14899   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
14900   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14901   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14902   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14903   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
14904   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
14905   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
14906   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
14907   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
14908   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
14909   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14910   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
14911   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
14912   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
14913   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
14914 </p></blockquote>
14915
14916 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14917
14918 <blockquote><p>
14919   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
14920   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
14921   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
14922   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
14923   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
14924   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
14925   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
14926   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
14927   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
14928   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
14929   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
14930   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
14931   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
14932   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
14933   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
14934   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
14935   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
14936   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
14937   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
14938   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
14939   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
14940 </p></blockquote>
14941
14942 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14943
14944 <blockquote><p>
14945   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
14946   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
14947   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
14948 </p></blockquote>
14949
14950 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
14951 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
14952 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
14953 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
14954 the difference somewhat.
14955
14956       </div>
14957       <div class="tags">
14958
14959
14960         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>.
14961
14962
14963       </div>
14964     </div>
14965     <div class="padding"></div>
14966
14967     <div class="entry">
14968       <div class="title">
14969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
14970       </div>
14971       <div class="date">
14972          1st July 2010
14973       </div>
14974       <div class="body">
14975         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
14976 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
14977 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
14978 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
14979 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
14980 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
14981 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
14982 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
14983 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
14984
14985 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
14986
14987 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
14988 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
14989 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
14990 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
14991 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
14992 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
14993 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
14994 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
14995 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
14996 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
14997 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
14998 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
14999 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
15000 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
15001 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
15002
15003 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
15004
15005 <blockquote><pre>
15006 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
15007 </pre></blockquote>
15008
15009 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
15010 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
15011 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
15012 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
15013 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
15014 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
15015 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
15016 on how to get this working.</p>
15017
15018 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
15019 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
15020 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
15021 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
15022 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
15023 instructions I found in the
15024 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
15025 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
15026
15027 <blockquote><pre>
15028         debug-level             0
15029         reload-count            unlimited
15030         paranoia                no
15031
15032         enable-cache            passwd          yes
15033         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
15034         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
15035         suggested-size          passwd          211
15036         check-files             passwd          yes
15037         persistent              passwd          yes
15038         shared                  passwd          yes
15039         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
15040         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
15041
15042         enable-cache            group           yes
15043         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
15044         negative-time-to-live   group           20
15045         suggested-size          group           211
15046         check-files             group           yes
15047         persistent              group           yes
15048         shared                  group           yes
15049         max-db-size             group           33554432
15050         auto-propagate          group           yes
15051
15052         enable-cache            hosts           no
15053         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
15054         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
15055         suggested-size          hosts           211
15056         check-files             hosts           yes
15057         persistent              hosts           yes
15058         shared                  hosts           yes
15059         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
15060
15061         enable-cache            services        yes
15062         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
15063         negative-time-to-live   services        20
15064         suggested-size          services        211
15065         check-files             services        yes
15066         persistent              services        yes
15067         shared                  services        yes
15068         max-db-size             services        33554432
15069 </pre></blockquote>
15070
15071 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
15072 automatically like the one provided in
15073 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
15074 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
15075 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
15076 look like this:</p>
15077
15078 <blockquote><pre>
15079 passwd:         files ldap
15080 group:          files ldap
15081 shadow:         files ldap
15082 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
15083 networks:       files
15084 protocols:      files
15085 services:       files
15086 ethers:         files
15087 rpc:            files
15088 netgroup:       files ldap
15089 </pre></blockquote>
15090
15091 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
15092 shadow and netgroup.</p>
15093
15094 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
15095 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
15096 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
15097 attributes cached.
15098
15099 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
15100   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
15101
15102 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
15103 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
15104 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
15105 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
15106 discovered sssd.</p>
15107
15108 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
15109
15110 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
15111 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
15112 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
15113 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
15114 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
15115 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
15116 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
15117 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
15118 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
15119 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
15120 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
15121 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
15122 version 1.2 is now in testing.
15123
15124 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
15125 roaming setup I want</p>
15126
15127 <blockquote><pre>
15128 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
15129 </pre></blockquote>
15130
15131 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
15132 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
15133
15134 <blockquote><pre>
15135 [sssd]
15136 config_file_version = 2
15137 reconnection_retries = 3
15138 sbus_timeout = 30
15139 services = nss, pam
15140 domains = INTERN
15141
15142 [nss]
15143 filter_groups = root
15144 filter_users = root
15145 reconnection_retries = 3
15146
15147 [pam]
15148 reconnection_retries = 3
15149
15150 [domain/INTERN]
15151 enumerate = false
15152 cache_credentials = true
15153
15154 id_provider = ldap
15155 auth_provider = ldap
15156 chpass_provider = ldap
15157
15158 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
15159 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15160 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
15161 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
15162 </pre></blockquote>
15163
15164 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
15165 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
15166
15167 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
15168 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
15169 modify it manually.</p>
15170
15171 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15172 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15173
15174       </div>
15175       <div class="tags">
15176
15177
15178         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
15179
15180
15181       </div>
15182     </div>
15183     <div class="padding"></div>
15184
15185     <div class="entry">
15186       <div class="title">
15187         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15188       </div>
15189       <div class="date">
15190         28th June 2010
15191       </div>
15192       <div class="body">
15193         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15194 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15195 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
15196 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15197 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
15198 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15199 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
15200 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15201 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
15202 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
15203
15204 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15205 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15206 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15207 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15208 released.</p>
15209
15210 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
15211 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15212 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
15213 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
15214
15215 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15216 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15217
15218 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15219 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
15220 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15221 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
15222 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
15223
15224       </div>
15225       <div class="tags">
15226
15227
15228         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>.
15229
15230
15231       </div>
15232     </div>
15233     <div class="padding"></div>
15234
15235     <div class="entry">
15236       <div class="title">
15237         <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>
15238       </div>
15239       <div class="date">
15240         24th June 2010
15241       </div>
15242       <div class="body">
15243         <p>A while back, I
15244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15245 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15246 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15247 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
15248
15249 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15250 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15251 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15252 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
15253
15254 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15255 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15256 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15257 Debian Edu.</p>
15258
15259 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15260 the
15261 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15262 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15263 available today from IETF.</p>
15264
15265 <pre>
15266 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
15267 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
15268 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
15269  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15270         NAME 'dhcpHost'
15271         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15272 -       SUP top
15273 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
15274         MUST cn
15275         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15276         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15277 </pre>
15278
15279 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15280 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15281 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
15282
15283 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15284 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15285
15286       </div>
15287       <div class="tags">
15288
15289
15290         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>.
15291
15292
15293       </div>
15294     </div>
15295     <div class="padding"></div>
15296
15297     <div class="entry">
15298       <div class="title">
15299         <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>
15300       </div>
15301       <div class="date">
15302         16th June 2010
15303       </div>
15304       <div class="body">
15305         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15306 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
15307 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15308 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15309 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15310 this:
15311
15312 <blockquote><pre>
15313 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15314 tasksel --new-install
15315 </pre></blockquote>
15316
15317 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15318 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15319 any output what so ever.
15320
15321 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15322 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15323 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15324 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15325 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15326 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
15327 code like this:
15328
15329 <blockquote><pre>
15330 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15331 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15332 $cmd
15333 </pre></blockquote>
15334
15335 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
15336 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15337 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15338 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15339 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15340 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15341 installation.</p>
15342
15343 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15344 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15345 like this.</p>
15346
15347       </div>
15348       <div class="tags">
15349
15350
15351         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>.
15352
15353
15354       </div>
15355     </div>
15356     <div class="padding"></div>
15357
15358     <div class="entry">
15359       <div class="title">
15360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
15361       </div>
15362       <div class="date">
15363         13th June 2010
15364       </div>
15365       <div class="body">
15366         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
15367 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
15368 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
15369 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
15370 pages.</p>
15371
15372 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
15373 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
15374 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
15375 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
15376 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
15377 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
15378 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
15379 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
15380 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
15381 see how the project is doing.</p>
15382
15383 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
15384 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
15385 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
15386 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
15387 Windows.  This is great.</p>
15388
15389       </div>
15390       <div class="tags">
15391
15392
15393         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
15394
15395
15396       </div>
15397     </div>
15398     <div class="padding"></div>
15399
15400     <div class="entry">
15401       <div class="title">
15402         <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>
15403       </div>
15404       <div class="date">
15405         13th June 2010
15406       </div>
15407       <div class="body">
15408         <p>My
15409 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
15410 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15411 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15412 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15413 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15414 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
15415 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15416
15417 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15418 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
15419 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15420 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15421 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15422 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15423 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15424 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15425
15426 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15427 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15428 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15429 too surprising.</p>
15430
15431 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15432 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
15433 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
15434 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15435 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15436 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
15437 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15438 continue.</p>
15439
15440 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15441 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15442   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15443   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15444   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15445   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15446   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15447   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15448   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15449   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15450   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15451   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15452   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15453   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15454   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15455   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15456   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15457   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15458   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15459   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15460   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15461   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15462   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15463   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15464   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15465   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15466   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15467   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15468   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15469   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15470
15471 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15472
15473 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15474   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15475   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15476   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15477   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15478   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15479   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15480   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15481   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15482   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15483   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15484   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15485   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15486   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15487   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15488   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15489   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15490   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15491   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15492   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15493   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15494   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15495   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15496   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15497   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15498   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15499   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15500   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15501   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15502   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15503   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15504   zip</p>
15505
15506 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15507
15508 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15509   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15510   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15511   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15512   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15513   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15514   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15515   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15516   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15517   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15518   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15519   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15520   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15521   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15522   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15523   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15524   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15525   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15526   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15527   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15528   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15529   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15530   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15531   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15532   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15533   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15534   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15535   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15536
15537 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15538 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15539   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15540   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15541   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15542   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15543   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15544   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15545   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15546   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15547   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15548   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15549   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15550   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15551   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15552   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15553   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15554   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15555   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15556   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15557   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
15558   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15559   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
15560   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
15561   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15562   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15563   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
15564   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
15565   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
15566   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
15567   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
15568   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
15569   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
15570   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
15571   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
15572   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15573   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15574   xulrunner-1.9</p>
15575
15576
15577       </div>
15578       <div class="tags">
15579
15580
15581         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>.
15582
15583
15584       </div>
15585     </div>
15586     <div class="padding"></div>
15587
15588     <div class="entry">
15589       <div class="title">
15590         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
15591       </div>
15592       <div class="date">
15593         11th June 2010
15594       </div>
15595       <div class="body">
15596         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
15597 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
15598 have been discovered and reported in the process
15599 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
15600 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
15601 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
15602 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
15603 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
15604
15605 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
15606 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
15607 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
15608 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
15609 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
15610 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
15611
15612 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
15613 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
15614 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15615 is created.  The bug report
15616 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
15617 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
15618 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
15619 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
15620 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
15621 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
15622 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
15623 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
15624 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
15625 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
15626 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
15627 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
15628 Debian Squeeze.</p>
15629
15630 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
15631 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
15632 trick:</p>
15633
15634 <blockquote><pre>
15635 #!/bin/sh
15636 set -ex
15637
15638 if [ "$1" ] ; then
15639     desktop=$1
15640 else
15641     desktop=gnome
15642 fi
15643
15644 from=lenny
15645 to=squeeze
15646
15647 exec &lt; /dev/null
15648 unset LANG
15649 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
15650 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
15651 fuser -mv .
15652 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
15653 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15654 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
15655 #!/bin/sh
15656 exit 101
15657 EOF
15658 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
15659 exit_cleanup() {
15660     umount $tmpdir/proc
15661 }
15662 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
15663 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
15664 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
15665
15666 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
15667
15668 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
15669 # to return the correct answers.
15670 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
15671     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
15672
15673 # Include the desktop and laptop task
15674 for test in desktop laptop ; do
15675     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
15676 #!/bin/sh
15677 exit 2
15678 EOF
15679     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
15680 done
15681
15682 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15683 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
15684 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
15685 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
15686
15687 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
15688 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15689 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15690 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
15691 fuser -mv
15692 </pre></blockquote>
15693
15694 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
15695 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
15696 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
15697 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
15698 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
15699 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
15700
15701 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
15702 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
15703 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
15704 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
15705 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
15706 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
15707 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
15708
15709 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
15710 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
15711 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
15712 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
15713 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
15714 packages.</p>
15715
15716       </div>
15717       <div class="tags">
15718
15719
15720         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>.
15721
15722
15723       </div>
15724     </div>
15725     <div class="padding"></div>
15726
15727     <div class="entry">
15728       <div class="title">
15729         <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>
15730       </div>
15731       <div class="date">
15732          6th June 2010
15733       </div>
15734       <div class="body">
15735         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
15736 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
15737 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
15738 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
15739 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
15740 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
15741 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
15742
15743 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
15744 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
15745 COLUMNS):</p>
15746
15747 <blockquote><pre>
15748 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
15749 previous=N
15750 PREVLEVEL=
15751 RUNLEVEL=
15752 runlevel=S
15753 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
15754 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
15755 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
15756 </pre></blockquote>
15757
15758 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
15759 script.</p>
15760
15761 <blockquote><pre>
15762 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
15763 previous=N
15764 PREVLEVEL=N
15765 RUNLEVEL=S
15766 runlevel=S
15767 </pre></blockquote>
15768
15769 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
15770 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
15771 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
15772
15773 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
15774 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
15775 choice.</p>
15776
15777       </div>
15778       <div class="tags">
15779
15780
15781         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>.
15782
15783
15784       </div>
15785     </div>
15786     <div class="padding"></div>
15787
15788     <div class="entry">
15789       <div class="title">
15790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
15791       </div>
15792       <div class="date">
15793          6th June 2010
15794       </div>
15795       <div class="body">
15796         <p>Via the
15797 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
15798 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
15799 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
15800 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
15801 following the standards wars of today.</p>
15802
15803       </div>
15804       <div class="tags">
15805
15806
15807         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>.
15808
15809
15810       </div>
15811     </div>
15812     <div class="padding"></div>
15813
15814     <div class="entry">
15815       <div class="title">
15816         <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>
15817       </div>
15818       <div class="date">
15819          3rd June 2010
15820       </div>
15821       <div class="body">
15822         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
15823 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
15824 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
15825 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
15826 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
15827
15828 <blockquote><pre>
15829 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
15830   vendor                    count
15831   Dell Computer Corporation     1
15832     PowerEdge 1750              1
15833   IBM                           1
15834     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
15835   Intel                         2
15836   [no-dmi-info]                 3
15837 maintainer:~#
15838 </pre></blockquote>
15839
15840 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
15841 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
15842 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
15843 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
15844 option to list the individual machines.</p>
15845
15846 <p>A larger list is
15847 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
15848 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
15849 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
15850 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
15851 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
15852 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
15853 collector.</p>
15854
15855       </div>
15856       <div class="tags">
15857
15858
15859         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>.
15860
15861
15862       </div>
15863     </div>
15864     <div class="padding"></div>
15865
15866     <div class="entry">
15867       <div class="title">
15868         <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>
15869       </div>
15870       <div class="date">
15871          1st June 2010
15872       </div>
15873       <div class="body">
15874         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
15875 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
15876 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
15877 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
15878 wait.</p>
15879
15880 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
15881 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
15882 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
15883 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
15884 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
15885 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
15886
15887 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
15888 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
15889 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
15890 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
15891 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
15892 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
15893 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
15894 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
15895
15896 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
15897
15898       </div>
15899       <div class="tags">
15900
15901
15902         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>.
15903
15904
15905       </div>
15906     </div>
15907     <div class="padding"></div>
15908
15909     <div class="entry">
15910       <div class="title">
15911         <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>
15912       </div>
15913       <div class="date">
15914         27th May 2010
15915       </div>
15916       <div class="body">
15917         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
15918 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
15919 issues are known and should be solved:
15920
15921 <p><ul>
15922
15923 <li>The wicd package seen to
15924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
15925 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
15926 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
15927 seem to be on the case.</li>
15928
15929 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
15930 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
15931 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
15932 maintainer is on the case.</li>
15933
15934 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
15935 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
15936 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
15937 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
15938 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
15939 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
15940 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
15941 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
15942
15943 </ul></p>
15944
15945 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
15946 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
15947 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
15948 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
15949
15950 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15951 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15952 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15953 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15954
15955 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
15956
15957       </div>
15958       <div class="tags">
15959
15960
15961         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>.
15962
15963
15964       </div>
15965     </div>
15966     <div class="padding"></div>
15967
15968     <div class="entry">
15969       <div class="title">
15970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
15971       </div>
15972       <div class="date">
15973         22nd May 2010
15974       </div>
15975       <div class="body">
15976         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
15977 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
15978 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
15979 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
15980
15981 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
15982 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
15983 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
15984 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
15985 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
15986 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
15987 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
15988 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
15989 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
15990 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
15991 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
15992 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
15993 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
15994 going to work.</p>
15995
15996 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
15997 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
15998 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
15999 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
16000 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
16001 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
16002 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
16003 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
16004 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
16005 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
16006 Edu.</p>
16007
16008 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
16009 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
16010 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
16011 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
16012 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
16013 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
16014
16015 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
16016 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
16017
16018       </div>
16019       <div class="tags">
16020
16021
16022         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>.
16023
16024
16025       </div>
16026     </div>
16027     <div class="padding"></div>
16028
16029     <div class="entry">
16030       <div class="title">
16031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
16032       </div>
16033       <div class="date">
16034         19th May 2010
16035       </div>
16036       <div class="body">
16037         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
16038 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
16039 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
16040 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
16041 into unstable.  The
16042 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
16043 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
16044 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
16045 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
16046 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16047 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
16048 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
16049
16050 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
16051 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
16052 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
16053 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
16054 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
16055 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
16056 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
16057 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
16058
16059 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
16060 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
16061 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
16062 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
16063 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
16064 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
16065 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
16066
16067 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
16068 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
16069 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
16070 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
16071 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
16072 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
16073 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
16074 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
16075 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
16076 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
16077 on the home directory servers.</p>
16078
16079 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
16080 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
16081 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
16082 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
16083 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
16084 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
16085
16086 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16087 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16088
16089       </div>
16090       <div class="tags">
16091
16092
16093         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16094
16095
16096       </div>
16097     </div>
16098     <div class="padding"></div>
16099
16100     <div class="entry">
16101       <div class="title">
16102         <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>
16103       </div>
16104       <div class="date">
16105         14th May 2010
16106       </div>
16107       <div class="body">
16108         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16109 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16110 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16111 expected, if I am to believe the
16112 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16113 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16114 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16115 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
16116 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16117 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16118 version.</p>
16119
16120 More information about
16121 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16122 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
16123 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16124 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16125
16126 <blockquote><pre>
16127 CONCURRENCY=none
16128 </pre></blockquote>
16129
16130 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16131 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16132 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16133 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16134
16135       </div>
16136       <div class="tags">
16137
16138
16139         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>.
16140
16141
16142       </div>
16143     </div>
16144     <div class="padding"></div>
16145
16146     <div class="entry">
16147       <div class="title">
16148         <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>
16149       </div>
16150       <div class="date">
16151         14th May 2010
16152       </div>
16153       <div class="body">
16154         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16155 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16156 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16157 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16158 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
16159 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16160 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
16161 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
16162
16163 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16164 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
16165 this on the collector host:</p>
16166
16167 <blockquote><pre>
16168 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16169 </pre></blockquote>
16170
16171 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16172 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
16173
16174 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16175 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16176 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16177 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
16178 written yet.</p>
16179
16180       </div>
16181       <div class="tags">
16182
16183
16184         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>.
16185
16186
16187       </div>
16188     </div>
16189     <div class="padding"></div>
16190
16191     <div class="entry">
16192       <div class="title">
16193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
16194       </div>
16195       <div class="date">
16196         13th May 2010
16197       </div>
16198       <div class="body">
16199         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16200 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
16201 has been
16202 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
16203
16204 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
16205 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16206 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
16207 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16208 based boot system.  Tollef is
16209 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
16210 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
16211 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16212 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16213 at the moment do not.</p>
16214
16215 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16216 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16217 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
16218 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16219 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16220 way forward.</p>
16221
16222 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16223 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16224 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16225 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16226 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16227 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
16228 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16229 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16230 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
16231
16232       </div>
16233       <div class="tags">
16234
16235
16236         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>.
16237
16238
16239       </div>
16240     </div>
16241     <div class="padding"></div>
16242
16243     <div class="entry">
16244       <div class="title">
16245         <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>
16246       </div>
16247       <div class="date">
16248          6th May 2010
16249       </div>
16250       <div class="body">
16251         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16252 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16253 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
16254 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16255 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16256 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16257 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16258
16259 <blockquote><pre>
16260 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16261 </pre></blockquote>
16262
16263 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16264 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16265 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16266 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
16267 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16268 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16269 make this happen.</p>
16270
16271 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
16272 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16273 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16274 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
16275 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
16276
16277 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16278 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
16279 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
16280 fix the remaining issues.</p>
16281
16282 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16283 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16284 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16285 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16286
16287       </div>
16288       <div class="tags">
16289
16290
16291         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>.
16292
16293
16294       </div>
16295     </div>
16296     <div class="padding"></div>
16297
16298     <div class="entry">
16299       <div class="title">
16300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
16301       </div>
16302       <div class="date">
16303          2nd May 2010
16304       </div>
16305       <div class="body">
16306         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
16307 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
16308 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
16309
16310 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
16311 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
16312 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
16313 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
16314 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
16315
16316 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
16317 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
16318
16319 <blockquote><pre>
16320 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16321 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
16322 Password expires                                        : never
16323 Password inactive                                       : never
16324 Account expires                                         : never
16325 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16326 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
16327 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16328 root@tjener:~#
16329 </pre></blockquote>
16330
16331 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
16332 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
16333 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
16334 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
16335 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
16336 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
16337
16338 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
16339 intended:</p>
16340
16341 <blockquote><pre>
16342 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
16343 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16344 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
16345 Password expires                                        : never
16346 Password inactive                                       : never
16347 Account expires                                         : never
16348 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16349 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
16350 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16351 root@tjener:~#
16352 </pre></blockquote>
16353
16354 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
16355 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
16356 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
16357
16358 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
16359 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
16360
16361 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
16362 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16363
16364 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
16365 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
16366 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
16367 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
16368 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
16369 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
16370 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
16371
16372 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
16373 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
16374 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
16375 change.</p>
16376
16377       </div>
16378       <div class="tags">
16379
16380
16381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
16382
16383
16384       </div>
16385     </div>
16386     <div class="padding"></div>
16387
16388     <div class="entry">
16389       <div class="title">
16390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
16391       </div>
16392       <div class="date">
16393         28th April 2010
16394       </div>
16395       <div class="body">
16396         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
16397 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
16398 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
16399 and go.</p>
16400
16401 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
16402 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
16403 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
16404 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
16405
16406 <ul>
16407
16408  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
16409    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
16410    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
16411    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
16412    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
16413    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
16414    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
16415    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
16416    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
16417    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
16418    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
16419    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
16420
16421  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
16422    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
16423    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
16424    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
16425    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16426    or the Fedora developed
16427    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
16428    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
16429
16430  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
16431    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
16432    directory, using unison.</li>
16433
16434  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
16435    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
16436    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
16437    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
16438    implemented.</li>
16439
16440  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
16441    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
16442
16443  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
16444    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
16445    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
16446
16447 </ul>
16448
16449 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
16450 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
16451 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
16452 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
16453 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
16454 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
16455 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
16456 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
16457 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
16458
16459 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16460 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16461
16462       </div>
16463       <div class="tags">
16464
16465
16466         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16467
16468
16469       </div>
16470     </div>
16471     <div class="padding"></div>
16472
16473     <div class="entry">
16474       <div class="title">
16475         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
16476       </div>
16477       <div class="date">
16478         19th April 2010
16479       </div>
16480       <div class="body">
16481         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
16482 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
16483 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
16484 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
16485 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
16486 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
16487 restrictions on the web, for example from
16488 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
16489 epub-version from
16490 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
16491 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
16492 strongly recommend this book.</p>
16493
16494       </div>
16495       <div class="tags">
16496
16497
16498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16499
16500
16501       </div>
16502     </div>
16503     <div class="padding"></div>
16504
16505     <div class="entry">
16506       <div class="title">
16507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
16508       </div>
16509       <div class="date">
16510         14th April 2010
16511       </div>
16512       <div class="body">
16513         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
16514 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
16515 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
16516 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
16517 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
16518 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
16519 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
16520 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
16521 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
16522
16523 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
16524 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
16525 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
16526 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
16527 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
16528
16529 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
16530 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
16531
16532 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
16533 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
16534 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
16535 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
16536 to work properly.</p>
16537
16538 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
16539 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
16540 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
16541 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
16542 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
16543 time.</p>
16544
16545 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
16546 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
16547 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
16548 up in a few days.</p>
16549
16550       </div>
16551       <div class="tags">
16552
16553
16554         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16555
16556
16557       </div>
16558     </div>
16559     <div class="padding"></div>
16560
16561     <div class="entry">
16562       <div class="title">
16563         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
16564       </div>
16565       <div class="date">
16566          6th March 2010
16567       </div>
16568       <div class="body">
16569         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
16570 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
16571 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
16572 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
16573 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
16574 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
16575
16576 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
16577 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
16578 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
16579 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
16580
16581 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
16582 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
16583 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
16584 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
16585 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
16586 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
16587
16588       </div>
16589       <div class="tags">
16590
16591
16592         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16593
16594
16595       </div>
16596     </div>
16597     <div class="padding"></div>
16598
16599     <div class="entry">
16600       <div class="title">
16601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
16602       </div>
16603       <div class="date">
16604         11th February 2010
16605       </div>
16606       <div class="body">
16607         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
16608 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
16609 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
16610 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
16611 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
16612 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
16613 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
16614
16615 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
16616
16617 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
16618 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
16619 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
16620 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
16621
16622       </div>
16623       <div class="tags">
16624
16625
16626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16627
16628
16629       </div>
16630     </div>
16631     <div class="padding"></div>
16632
16633     <div class="entry">
16634       <div class="title">
16635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
16636       </div>
16637       <div class="date">
16638         27th January 2010
16639       </div>
16640       <div class="body">
16641         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
16642 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
16643 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
16644 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
16645 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
16646 further.</p>
16647
16648 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
16649 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
16650 configured to be a server for the
16651 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
16652 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
16653 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
16654 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
16655 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
16656 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
16657 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
16658 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
16659 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
16660 and Nagios configuration.</p>
16661
16662 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
16663 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
16664 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
16665 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
16666
16667 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
16668 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
16669 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
16670 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
16671 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
16672 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
16673 the machine.</p>
16674
16675 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
16676 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
16677 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
16678 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
16679
16680 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
16681 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
16682 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
16683 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
16684 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
16685 everything is taken care of.</p>
16686
16687       </div>
16688       <div class="tags">
16689
16690
16691         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
16692
16693
16694       </div>
16695     </div>
16696     <div class="padding"></div>
16697
16698     <div class="entry">
16699       <div class="title">
16700         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
16701       </div>
16702       <div class="date">
16703         12th August 2009
16704       </div>
16705       <div class="body">
16706         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
16707 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
16708 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
16709 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
16710
16711 <table>
16712 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16713 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
16714 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
16715 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
16716 </table>
16717
16718 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
16719 got these numbers:</p>
16720
16721 <table>
16722 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16723 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
16724 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
16725 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
16726 </table>
16727
16728 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
16729
16730 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
16731 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
16732 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
16733 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
16734 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
16735
16736
16737 <table>
16738 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16739 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
16740 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
16741 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
16742 </table>
16743
16744 <p>And with 'site:no':
16745
16746 <table>
16747 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16748 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
16749 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
16750 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
16751 </table>
16752
16753 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
16754 numbers.</p>
16755
16756       </div>
16757       <div class="tags">
16758
16759
16760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16761
16762
16763       </div>
16764     </div>
16765     <div class="padding"></div>
16766
16767     <div class="entry">
16768       <div class="title">
16769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
16770       </div>
16771       <div class="date">
16772          8th August 2009
16773       </div>
16774       <div class="body">
16775         <p>According to <a
16776 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
16777 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
16778 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
16779 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
16780 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
16781 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
16782 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
16783 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
16784 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
16785 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
16786
16787 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
16788 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
16789 seminar this autumn.</p>
16790
16791       </div>
16792       <div class="tags">
16793
16794
16795         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
16796
16797
16798       </div>
16799     </div>
16800     <div class="padding"></div>
16801
16802     <div class="entry">
16803       <div class="title">
16804         <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>
16805       </div>
16806       <div class="date">
16807         27th July 2009
16808       </div>
16809       <div class="body">
16810         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
16811 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
16812 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
16813 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
16814 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
16815 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
16816 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
16817
16818 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
16819 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
16820 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
16821
16822       </div>
16823       <div class="tags">
16824
16825
16826         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>.
16827
16828
16829       </div>
16830     </div>
16831     <div class="padding"></div>
16832
16833     <div class="entry">
16834       <div class="title">
16835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
16836       </div>
16837       <div class="date">
16838         22nd July 2009
16839       </div>
16840       <div class="body">
16841         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
16842 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
16843 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
16844 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
16845 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
16846 the package up to date.</p>
16847
16848 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
16849 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
16850 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
16851 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
16852 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
16853 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
16854 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
16855 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
16856 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
16857 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
16858 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
16859 working on the future release.</p>
16860
16861 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
16862 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
16863
16864       </div>
16865       <div class="tags">
16866
16867
16868         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>.
16869
16870
16871       </div>
16872     </div>
16873     <div class="padding"></div>
16874
16875     <div class="entry">
16876       <div class="title">
16877         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
16878       </div>
16879       <div class="date">
16880         24th June 2009
16881       </div>
16882       <div class="body">
16883         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
16884 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
16885 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
16886 funded
16887 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
16888 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
16889 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
16890 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
16891 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
16892 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
16893
16894 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
16895 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
16896 boot:</p>
16897
16898 <ul>
16899
16900 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
16901
16902 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
16903    clock is in UTC.</li>
16904
16905 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
16906    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16907    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
16908
16909 </ul>
16910
16911 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
16912 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
16913 Villegas</a>.
16914
16915 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
16916 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
16917 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
16918 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
16919 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
16920 using this.</p>
16921
16922 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
16923 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
16924 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
16925 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
16926 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
16927 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
16928 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
16929
16930       </div>
16931       <div class="tags">
16932
16933
16934         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>.
16935
16936
16937       </div>
16938     </div>
16939     <div class="padding"></div>
16940
16941     <div class="entry">
16942       <div class="title">
16943         <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>
16944       </div>
16945       <div class="date">
16946          2nd May 2009
16947       </div>
16948       <div class="body">
16949         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
16950 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
16951 do not yet know them.</p>
16952
16953 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
16954 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
16955 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
16956 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
16957 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
16958 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
16959 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
16960 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
16961 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
16962 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
16963 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
16964
16965 <p>The second one is
16966 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
16967 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
16968 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
16969 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
16970 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
16971 and the company behind it is running
16972 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
16973 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
16974 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
16975 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
16976 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
16977 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
16978 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
16979 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
16980
16981 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
16982 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
16983 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
16984 surrounded by today.</p>
16985
16986       </div>
16987       <div class="tags">
16988
16989
16990         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>.
16991
16992
16993       </div>
16994     </div>
16995     <div class="padding"></div>
16996
16997     <div class="entry">
16998       <div class="title">
16999         <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>
17000       </div>
17001       <div class="date">
17002         28th April 2009
17003       </div>
17004       <div class="body">
17005         <p>Julien Blache
17006 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
17007 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
17008 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
17009 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
17010 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
17011 properties.</p>
17012
17013       </div>
17014       <div class="tags">
17015
17016
17017         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>.
17018
17019
17020       </div>
17021     </div>
17022     <div class="padding"></div>
17023
17024     <div class="entry">
17025       <div class="title">
17026         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
17027       </div>
17028       <div class="date">
17029          5th April 2009
17030       </div>
17031       <div class="body">
17032         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
17033 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
17034 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
17035 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
17036 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
17037 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
17038 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
17039 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
17040
17041 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
17042 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
17043 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
17044   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17045   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
17046
17047 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
17048 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
17049 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
17050 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
17051
17052 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
17053 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
17054 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
17055 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
17056
17057 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
17058 set -e
17059 URL="$1"
17060 SAVEFILE="$2"
17061 DURATION="$3"
17062 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
17063   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17064   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
17065 pid=$!
17066 sleep $DURATION
17067 kill $pid
17068 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
17069
17070       </div>
17071       <div class="tags">
17072
17073
17074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17075
17076
17077       </div>
17078     </div>
17079     <div class="padding"></div>
17080
17081     <div class="entry">
17082       <div class="title">
17083         <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>
17084       </div>
17085       <div class="date">
17086         30th March 2009
17087       </div>
17088       <div class="body">
17089         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17090 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
17091 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17092 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17093 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17094 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17095 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17096 application.</p>
17097
17098 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17099 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
17100 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17101 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
17102 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17103 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17104 blocked from doing so.</p>
17105
17106 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17107 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17108 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17109 requirements change.</p>
17110
17111 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17112 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17113 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
17114
17115       </div>
17116       <div class="tags">
17117
17118
17119         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>.
17120
17121
17122       </div>
17123     </div>
17124     <div class="padding"></div>
17125
17126     <div class="entry">
17127       <div class="title">
17128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
17129       </div>
17130       <div class="date">
17131         29th March 2009
17132       </div>
17133       <div class="body">
17134         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17135 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
17136 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17137 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
17138 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17139 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
17140 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17141 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
17142 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17143 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
17144 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
17145 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17146 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
17147 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
17148 now. :)</p>
17149
17150       </div>
17151       <div class="tags">
17152
17153
17154         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>.
17155
17156
17157       </div>
17158     </div>
17159     <div class="padding"></div>
17160
17161     <div class="entry">
17162       <div class="title">
17163         <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>
17164       </div>
17165       <div class="date">
17166         29th March 2009
17167       </div>
17168       <div class="body">
17169         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17170 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17171 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
17172 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
17173 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17174 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
17175
17176 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
17177 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17178 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17179 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
17180 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17181 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17182 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17183 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
17184 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17185 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17186 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17187 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
17188 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
17189
17190 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17191 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17192 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17193 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
17194
17195 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17196 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
17197
17198 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17199 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
17200 new IETF work group?</p>
17201
17202       </div>
17203       <div class="tags">
17204
17205
17206         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>.
17207
17208
17209       </div>
17210     </div>
17211     <div class="padding"></div>
17212
17213     <div class="entry">
17214       <div class="title">
17215         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
17216       </div>
17217       <div class="date">
17218         28th February 2009
17219       </div>
17220       <div class="body">
17221         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
17222 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
17223 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
17224 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
17225 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
17226 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
17227 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
17228 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
17229 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
17230 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
17231 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
17232 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
17233 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
17234 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
17235 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
17236 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
17237 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
17238 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
17239 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
17240 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
17241 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
17242 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
17243 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
17244 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
17245 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
17246 machine.</p>
17247
17248 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
17249 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
17250 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
17251 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
17252 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
17253 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
17254 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
17255
17256 <pre>
17257 use LWP::Simple;
17258 use POSIX;
17259 use WWW::Mechanize;
17260 use Date::Parse;
17261 [...]
17262 sub get_support_info {
17263     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
17264     my $str;
17265
17266     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
17267         # fetch website from Dell support
17268         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
17269         my $webpage = get($url);
17270         return undef unless ($webpage);
17271
17272         my $daysleft = -1;
17273         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
17274         foreach my $line (@lines) {
17275             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
17276             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17277             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
17278
17279             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
17280             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
17281             my $lastend = "";
17282             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
17283                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
17284
17285                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17286                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17287                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17288                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
17289                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
17290                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
17291                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
17292             }
17293             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17294             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17295                 if ($lastend lt $today);
17296         }
17297     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
17298         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
17299         my $url =
17300             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
17301         $mech->get($url);
17302         my $fields = {
17303             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
17304             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
17305             'country' => 'NO',
17306             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
17307             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
17308         };
17309         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
17310                             fields      => $fields );
17311         # Next step is screen scraping
17312         my $content = $mech->content();
17313
17314         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17315         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17316         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17317         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17318
17319         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17320
17321         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
17322             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
17323                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
17324             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
17325             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17326                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17327             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17328                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
17329
17330             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
17331
17332             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17333                 if ($end lt $today);
17334         }
17335     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
17336         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
17337         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
17338         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
17339             my $content =
17340                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
17341             if ($content) {
17342                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17343                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17344                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17345                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17346
17347                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
17348                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
17349
17350                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
17351
17352                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17353                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17354                     if ($end lt $today);
17355             }
17356         }
17357     }
17358     return $str;
17359 }
17360 </pre>
17361
17362 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
17363 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
17364 from dmidecode.</p>
17365
17366 <pre>
17367 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
17368                        "447707-B21");
17369 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
17370 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
17371                        "1234567");
17372 </pre>
17373
17374 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
17375 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
17376
17377 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
17378 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
17379 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
17380 do so.</p>
17381
17382       </div>
17383       <div class="tags">
17384
17385
17386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17387
17388
17389       </div>
17390     </div>
17391     <div class="padding"></div>
17392
17393     <div class="entry">
17394       <div class="title">
17395         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
17396       </div>
17397       <div class="date">
17398         20th February 2009
17399       </div>
17400       <div class="body">
17401         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
17402 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
17403 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
17404 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
17405 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
17406 the "missing" computer.</p>
17407
17408 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
17409 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
17410 code blocks as defined in the
17411 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
17412 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
17413 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
17414 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
17415 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
17416 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
17417 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
17418 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
17419 codes.</p>
17420
17421 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
17422 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
17423 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
17424 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
17425 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
17426 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
17427
17428 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
17429 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
17430 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
17431 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
17432 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
17433 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
17434 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
17435 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
17436 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
17437 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
17438
17439 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
17440 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
17441 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
17442
17443       </div>
17444       <div class="tags">
17445
17446
17447         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
17448
17449
17450       </div>
17451     </div>
17452     <div class="padding"></div>
17453
17454     <div class="entry">
17455       <div class="title">
17456         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
17457       </div>
17458       <div class="date">
17459         17th January 2009
17460       </div>
17461       <div class="body">
17462         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
17463 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
17464 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
17465 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
17466 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
17467 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
17468 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
17469 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
17470 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
17471 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
17472 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
17473 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
17474 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
17475 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
17476
17477 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
17478 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
17479 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
17480 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
17481 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
17482 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
17483 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
17484 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
17485 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
17486 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
17487 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
17488 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
17489 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
17490 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
17491 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
17492 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
17493 playing when the download is done.</p>
17494
17495 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
17496 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
17497 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
17498 too.</p>
17499
17500 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
17501 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
17502 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
17503 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
17504
17505       </div>
17506       <div class="tags">
17507
17508
17509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
17510
17511
17512       </div>
17513     </div>
17514     <div class="padding"></div>
17515
17516     <div class="entry">
17517       <div class="title">
17518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
17519       </div>
17520       <div class="date">
17521         28th December 2008
17522       </div>
17523       <div class="body">
17524         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
17525 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
17526 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
17527 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
17528 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
17529 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
17530 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
17531 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
17532 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
17533 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
17534 source, sink and mixer applications and
17535 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
17536 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
17537 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
17538 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
17539 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
17540 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
17541 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
17542 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
17543 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
17544
17545 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
17546 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
17547 larger stick as well.</p>
17548
17549       </div>
17550       <div class="tags">
17551
17552
17553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17554
17555
17556       </div>
17557     </div>
17558     <div class="padding"></div>
17559
17560     <div class="entry">
17561       <div class="title">
17562         <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>
17563       </div>
17564       <div class="date">
17565          7th December 2008
17566       </div>
17567       <div class="body">
17568         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
17569 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
17570 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
17571 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
17572 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
17573 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
17574 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
17575 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
17576
17577 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
17578 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
17579 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
17580 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
17581 of these cards.</p>
17582
17583       </div>
17584       <div class="tags">
17585
17586
17587         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>.
17588
17589
17590       </div>
17591     </div>
17592     <div class="padding"></div>
17593
17594     <div class="entry">
17595       <div class="title">
17596         <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>
17597       </div>
17598       <div class="date">
17599         25th November 2008
17600       </div>
17601       <div class="body">
17602         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
17603 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
17604 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
17605 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
17606 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
17607 notes are available on
17608 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
17609 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
17610 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
17611 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
17612 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
17613 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
17614 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
17615 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
17616 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
17617
17618 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
17619 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
17620
17621       </div>
17622       <div class="tags">
17623
17624
17625         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>.
17626
17627
17628       </div>
17629     </div>
17630     <div class="padding"></div>
17631
17632     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
17633     <div id="sidebar">
17634
17635
17636
17637 <h2>Archive</h2>
17638 <ul>
17639
17640 <li>2013
17641 <ul>
17642
17643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
17644
17645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
17646
17647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
17648
17649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
17650
17651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17652
17653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
17654
17655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17656
17657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17658
17659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
17660
17661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
17662
17663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (1)</a></li>
17664
17665 </ul></li>
17666
17667 <li>2012
17668 <ul>
17669
17670 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
17671
17672 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
17673
17674 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
17675
17676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
17677
17678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
17679
17680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
17681
17682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
17683
17684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17685
17686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
17687
17688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
17689
17690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
17691
17692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17693
17694 </ul></li>
17695
17696 <li>2011
17697 <ul>
17698
17699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
17700
17701 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
17702
17703 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
17704
17705 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
17706
17707 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17708
17709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17710
17711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17712
17713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17714
17715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
17716
17717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17718
17719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17720
17721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17722
17723 </ul></li>
17724
17725 <li>2010
17726 <ul>
17727
17728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
17729
17730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17731
17732 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17733
17734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
17735
17736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17737
17738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
17739
17740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
17741
17742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
17743
17744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
17745
17746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
17747
17748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
17749
17750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
17751
17752 </ul></li>
17753
17754 <li>2009
17755 <ul>
17756
17757 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
17758
17759 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
17760
17761 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
17762
17763 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
17764
17765 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17766
17767 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
17768
17769 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
17770
17771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17772
17773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17774
17775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17776
17777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17778
17779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17780
17781 </ul></li>
17782
17783 <li>2008
17784 <ul>
17785
17786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
17787
17788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17789
17790 </ul></li>
17791
17792 </ul>
17793
17794
17795
17796 <h2>Tags</h2>
17797 <ul>
17798
17799  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
17800
17801  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
17802
17803  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
17804
17805  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
17806
17807  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
17808
17809  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
17810
17811  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
17812
17813  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (89)</a></li>
17814
17815  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
17816
17817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
17818
17819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
17820
17821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
17822
17823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (224)</a></li>
17824
17825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
17826
17827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
17828
17829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
17830
17831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
17832
17833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
17834
17835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
17836
17837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
17838
17839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
17840
17841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
17842
17843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
17844
17845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
17846
17847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (3)</a></li>
17848
17849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
17850
17851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (236)</a></li>
17852
17853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (156)</a></li>
17854
17855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
17856
17857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
17858
17859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
17860
17861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
17862
17863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
17864
17865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
17866
17867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
17868
17869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (8)</a></li>
17870
17871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
17872
17873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
17874
17875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
17876
17877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (32)</a></li>
17878
17879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
17880
17881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
17882
17883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
17884
17885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
17886
17887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
17888
17889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (20)</a></li>
17890
17891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
17892
17893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
17894
17895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
17896
17897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
17898
17899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
17900
17901 </ul>
17902
17903
17904     </div>
17905     <p style="text-align: right">
17906  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
17907 </p>
17908
17909   </body>
17910 </html>