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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          3rd July 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
  32 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
  33 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
  34 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
  35 flickering.</p>
  36
  37 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
  38 still as
  39 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
  40 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
  41 good help from
  42 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
  43 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
  44 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
  45 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
  46 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
  47 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
  48 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
  49 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
  50 deteriorated since X41.</p>
  51
  52 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
  53 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
  54 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
  55 have suggestions.</p>
  56
  57       </div>
  58       <div class="tags">
  59
  60
  61         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>.
  62
  63
  64       </div>
  65     </div>
  66     <div class="padding"></div>
  67
  68     <div class="entry">
  69       <div class="title">
  70         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
  71       </div>
  72       <div class="date">
  73         22nd November 2014
  74       </div>
  75       <div class="body">
  76         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
  77 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
  78 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
  79 courtesy of
  80 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
  81 Schubert</a> and
  82 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
  83 McVittie</a>.
  84
  85 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
  86 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
  87 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
  88 you upgrade:</p>
  89
  90 <p><blockquote><pre>
  91 Package: systemd-sysv
  92 Pin: release o=Debian
  93 Pin-Priority: -1
  94 </pre></blockquote><p>
  95
  96 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
  97 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
  98 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
  99 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 100 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 101
 102 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 103 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 104 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 105 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 106 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 107 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 108
 109 <p><blockquote><pre>
 110 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 111 </pre></blockquote><p>
 112
 113 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 114
 115 <p><blockquote><pre>
 116 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 117 </pre></blockquote><p>
 118
 119 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 120 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 121
 122 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 123 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 124 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 125 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 126 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 127 Jessie is released.</p>
 128
 129 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 130 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 131 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 132 line.</p>
 133
 134       </div>
 135       <div class="tags">
 136
 137
 138         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>.
 139
 140
 141       </div>
 142     </div>
 143     <div class="padding"></div>
 144
 145     <div class="entry">
 146       <div class="title">
 147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
 148       </div>
 149       <div class="date">
 150         10th November 2014
 151       </div>
 152       <div class="body">
 153         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 154 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 155 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 156
 157 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 158 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 159 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 160 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 161 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 162 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 163 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 164 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 165 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 166 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 167 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 168 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 169 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 170 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 171 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 172
 173 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 174 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 175 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 176 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 177 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 178 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 179 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 180 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 181 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 182 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 183 were fairly easy, and
 184 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 185 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 186 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 187 useful approach.</p>
 188
 189 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 190 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 191 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 192 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 193 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 194 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 195 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 196 this:</p>
 197
 198 <p><blockquote><pre>
 199 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 200   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 201 </pre></blockquote></p>
 202
 203 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 204 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 205
 206 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 207 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 208 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 209 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 210 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 211 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 212 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 213 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 214 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 215 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 216 system.</p>
 217
 218 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 219 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 220 SMTorP. :)</p>
 221
 222       </div>
 223       <div class="tags">
 224
 225
 226         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 227
 228
 229       </div>
 230     </div>
 231     <div class="padding"></div>
 232
 233     <div class="entry">
 234       <div class="title">
 235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
 236       </div>
 237       <div class="date">
 238         22nd October 2014
 239       </div>
 240       <div class="body">
 241         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 242 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 243 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 244 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 245 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 246 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 247 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 248 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 249 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 250 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 251 lists I recently took over:</p>
 252
 253 <p><blockquote><pre>
 254 % time listadmin xiph
 255 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 256 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 257
 258 real    0m1.709s
 259 user    0m0.232s
 260 sys     0m0.012s
 261 %
 262 </pre></blockquote></p>
 263
 264 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 265 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 266 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 267 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 268 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 269 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 270 program.</p>
 271
 272 <p>If you install
 273 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 274 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 275 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 276
 277 <p><blockquote><pre>
 278 username username@example.org
 279 spamlevel 23
 280 default discard
 281 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 282
 283 password secret
 284 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 285 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 286
 287 password hidden
 288 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 289 </pre></blockquote></p>
 290
 291 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 292 learn the details.</p>
 293
 294 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 295 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 296 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 297 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 298
 299 <p><blockquote><pre>
 300 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 301 </pre></blockquote></p>
 302
 303 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 304 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 305 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 306 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 307 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 308 email.</p>
 309
 310 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 311 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 312 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 313 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 314 software.</p>
 315
 316 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 317 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 318 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 319
 320 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 321 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 322 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 323 sure why.</p>
 324
 325       </div>
 326       <div class="tags">
 327
 328
 329         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>.
 330
 331
 332       </div>
 333     </div>
 334     <div class="padding"></div>
 335
 336     <div class="entry">
 337       <div class="title">
 338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 339       </div>
 340       <div class="date">
 341         17th October 2014
 342       </div>
 343       <div class="body">
 344         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 345 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 346 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 347 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 348 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 349 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 350 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 351
 352 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 353 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 354 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 355 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 356 of this story.)</p>
 357
 358 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 359 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 360 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 361 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 362 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 363 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 364 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 365 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 366 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 367 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 368
 369 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 370 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 371 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 372 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 373
 374 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 375 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 376
 377 <p><blockquote><pre>
 378 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 379 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 380 </pre></blockquote></p>
 381
 382 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 383 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 384 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 385 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 386 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 387 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 388 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 389 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 390
 391 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 392 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 393
 394 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 395 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 396 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 397 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 398 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 399
 400 <p><blockquote><pre>
 401 Task: isenkram-packages
 402 Section: hardware
 403 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 404  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 405  proposed.
 406 Test-new-install: show show
 407 Relevance: 8
 408 Packages: for-current-hardware
 409
 410 Task: isenkram-firmware
 411 Section: hardware
 412 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 413  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 414  packages are proposed.
 415 Test-new-install: mark show
 416 Relevance: 8
 417 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 418 </pre></blockquote></p>
 419
 420 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 421 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 422 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 423 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 424 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 425
 426 <p><blockquote><pre>
 427 #!/bin/sh
 428 #
 429 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 430 export PATH
 431 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 432 </pre></blockquote></p>
 433
 434 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 435 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 436
 437 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 438 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 439 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 440 install.</p>
 441
 442 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 443 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 444 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 445
 446       </div>
 447       <div class="tags">
 448
 449
 450         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 451
 452
 453       </div>
 454     </div>
 455     <div class="padding"></div>
 456
 457     <div class="entry">
 458       <div class="title">
 459         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
 460       </div>
 461       <div class="date">
 462          4th October 2014
 463       </div>
 464       <div class="body">
 465         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 466 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 467 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 468 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
 469
 470 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
 471
 472 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 473 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 474 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
 475
 476       </div>
 477       <div class="tags">
 478
 479
 480         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>.
 481
 482
 483       </div>
 484     </div>
 485     <div class="padding"></div>
 486
 487     <div class="entry">
 488       <div class="title">
 489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
 490       </div>
 491       <div class="date">
 492          4th October 2014
 493       </div>
 494       <div class="body">
 495         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
 496 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 497 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 498 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 499 Dibb.</p>
 500
 501 <p>I just wrapped up
 502 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
 503 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
 504 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
 505 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 506 0.17.</p>
 507
 508 <ul>
 509
 510  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
 511  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 512    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
 513  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
 514  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
 515  <li>Fix include orders</li>
 516  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
 517  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
 518  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 519    the palette size is the same.</li>
 520  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
 521  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
 522  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
 523  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 524    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
 525
 526 </ul>
 527
 528 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 529 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 530 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
 531
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="tags">
 534
 535
 536         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 537
 538
 539       </div>
 540     </div>
 541     <div class="padding"></div>
 542
 543     <div class="entry">
 544       <div class="title">
 545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
 546       </div>
 547       <div class="date">
 548         26th September 2014
 549       </div>
 550       <div class="body">
 551         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 552 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 553 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 554 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 555 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 556 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 557 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 558 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 559 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 560 future.  The
 561 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 562 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 563 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 564 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 565 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 566
 567 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 568 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 569 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 570 or rsync (use
 571 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 572 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 573 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 574 install with some tweaking.</p>
 575
 576 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 577 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 578
 579 <p><blockquote><pre>
 580 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 581 </pre></blockquote></p>
 582
 583 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 584 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 585 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 586 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 587
 588 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 589 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 590 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 591 your need.</p>
 592
 593 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 594 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 595 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 596 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 597 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 598 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 599 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 600 days.</p>
 601
 602 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 603 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 604 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 605 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 606 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 607 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 608 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 609 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 610 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 611
 612 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 613 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 614 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 615
 616       </div>
 617       <div class="tags">
 618
 619
 620         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>.
 621
 622
 623       </div>
 624     </div>
 625     <div class="padding"></div>
 626
 627     <div class="entry">
 628       <div class="title">
 629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
 630       </div>
 631       <div class="date">
 632         25th September 2014
 633       </div>
 634       <div class="body">
 635         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
 636 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 637 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 638 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 639 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 640 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 641 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 642 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 643 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
 644 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 645 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 646 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 647 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
 648
 649 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 650 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 651 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 652 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 653 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 654 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 655 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 656 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
 657 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
 658 list</a>. :)</p>
 659
 660       </div>
 661       <div class="tags">
 662
 663
 664         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 665
 666
 667       </div>
 668     </div>
 669     <div class="padding"></div>
 670
 671     <div class="entry">
 672       <div class="title">
 673         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
 674       </div>
 675       <div class="date">
 676         16th September 2014
 677       </div>
 678       <div class="body">
 679         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
 680 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 681 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
 682 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 683 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 684 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
 685 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 686 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 687 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 688 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 689 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 690 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 691 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 692 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
 693
 694 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 695 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 696 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 697 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 698 depend on the small and clever package
 699 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
 700 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 701 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 702 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 703 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 704 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 705 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 706 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 707 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 708 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 709 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 710
 711 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 712 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 713 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 714 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 715 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 716 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 717 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 718 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 719 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 720 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 721 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 722 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 723 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 724 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 725 dialog.</p>
 726
 727 <p><table>
 728
 729 <tr>
 730 <th>Machine/setup</th>
 731 <th>Original tasksel</th>
 732 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
 733 <th>Reduction</th>
 734 </tr>
 735
 736 <tr>
 737 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
 738 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
 739 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
 740 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
 741 </tr>
 742
 743 <tr>
 744 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
 745 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
 746 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
 747 <td>23 min 40%</td>
 748 </tr>
 749
 750 <tr>
 751 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
 752 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
 753 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
 754 <td>11 min 50%</td>
 755 </tr>
 756
 757 <tr>
 758 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
 759 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
 760 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
 761 <td>2 min 33%</td>
 762 </tr>
 763
 764 <tr>
 765 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
 766 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
 767 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
 768 <td>4 min 21%</td>
 769 </tr>
 770
 771 </table></p>
 772
 773 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
 774 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
 775 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
 776 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
 777 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
 778 installed.</p>
 779
 780 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
 781 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
 782 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
 783 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
 784 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
 785 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
 786 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
 787 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
 788 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
 789 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
 790 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
 791 for the entire installation.</p>
 792
 793 <p>I've implemented this in the
 794 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
 795 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
 796 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
 797 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
 798 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
 799
 800 <p><blockquote><pre>
 801 #!/bin/sh
 802 set -e
 803 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 804 info() {
 805     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
 806 }
 807 error() {
 808     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
 809 }
 810 override_install() {
 811     apt-install eatmydata || true
 812     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
 813         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 814             file=/usr/bin/$bin
 815             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
 816             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
 817                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
 818                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
 819                     > /target$file.edu
 820                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
 821                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 822                     --rename --quiet --add $file
 823                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
 824             else
 825                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
 826             fi
 827         done
 828     else
 829         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
 830     fi
 831 }
 832
 833 override_install
 834 </pre></blockquote></p>
 835
 836 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
 837 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
 838
 839 <p><blockquote><pre>
 840 #! /bin/sh -e
 841 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
 842 error() {
 843     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
 844 }
 845 remove_install_override() {
 846     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
 847         file=/usr/bin/$bin
 848         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
 849             rm /target$file
 850             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
 851                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
 852             rm /target$file.edu
 853         else
 854             error "Missing divert for $file."
 855         fi
 856     done
 857     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
 858 }
 859
 860 remove_install_override
 861 </pre></blockquote></p>
 862
 863 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
 864 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
 865 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
 866
 867 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
 868 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
 869 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
 870 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
 871 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
 872 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
 873 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
 874 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
 875 everyone.</p>
 876
 877 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
 878 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
 879 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
 880 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
 881
 882 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
 883 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
 884 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
 885 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
 886 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
 887
 888 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
 889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
 890 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
 891 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
 892 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
 893
 894       </div>
 895       <div class="tags">
 896
 897
 898         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>.
 899
 900
 901       </div>
 902     </div>
 903     <div class="padding"></div>
 904
 905     <div class="entry">
 906       <div class="title">
 907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
 908       </div>
 909       <div class="date">
 910         10th September 2014
 911       </div>
 912       <div class="body">
 913         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
 914 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
 915 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
 916 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
 917 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
 918 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
 919 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
 920 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
 921 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
 922 those problems are gone now.</p>
 923
 924 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
 925 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
 926 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
 927 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
 928 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
 929
 930 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
 931 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
 932 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
 933
 934 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
 935 line:</p>
 936
 937 <p><blockquote><pre>
 938 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
 939 </pre></blockquote></p>
 940
 941 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
 942 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
 943 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
 944 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
 945
 946 <p><blockquote><pre>
 947 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
 948 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
 949 %
 950 </pre></blockquote></p>
 951
 952 <p>Now if only
 953 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
 954 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
 955 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
 956 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
 957 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
 958 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
 959 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
 960 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
 961 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
 962
 963       </div>
 964       <div class="tags">
 965
 966
 967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 968
 969
 970       </div>
 971     </div>
 972     <div class="padding"></div>
 973
 974     <div class="entry">
 975       <div class="title">
 976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
 977       </div>
 978       <div class="date">
 979         17th June 2014
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="body">
 982         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 983 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
 984 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
 985 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
 986 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
 987
 988 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
 989 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
 990 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
 991 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
 992 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
 993 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
 994 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
 995 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
 996 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
 997 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
 998 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
 999 goals.</p>
1000
1001 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1002 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1003 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1004 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1005 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1006 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1007 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1008 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1009 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1010 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1011 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1012 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1013 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1014 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1015 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1016 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1017 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1018 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1019 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1020 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1021 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1022 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1023 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1024 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1025
1026 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1027 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1028 track the English original.  For this we use the
1029 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1030 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1031 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1032 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1033 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1034 files), which the translations update with the native language
1035 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1036 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1037 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1038 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1039 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1040 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1041 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1042 of the documentation.</p>
1043
1044 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1045 recommend using
1046 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1047 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1048 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1049 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1050 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1051 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1052 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1053 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1054
1055 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1056 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1057 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1058 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1059 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1060 translated images by storing translated versions in
1061 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1062 package maintainers know more.</p>
1063
1064 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1065 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1066 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1067 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1068 PDF version</a> or the
1069 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1070 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1071 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1072
1073 <p>To learn more, check out
1074 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1075 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1076 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1077 manual on the wiki</a> and
1078 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1079 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1080
1081       </div>
1082       <div class="tags">
1083
1084
1085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1086
1087
1088       </div>
1089     </div>
1090     <div class="padding"></div>
1091
1092     <div class="entry">
1093       <div class="title">
1094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
1095       </div>
1096       <div class="date">
1097         23rd April 2014
1098       </div>
1099       <div class="body">
1100         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1101 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1102 So I implemented one, using
1103 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1104 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1105 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1106 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1107 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1108 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1109
1110 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1111 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1112 packages to install.  The first part is in
1113 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1114 this:</p>
1115
1116 <p><blockquote><pre>
1117 Task: isenkram
1118 Section: hardware
1119 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1120  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1121  proposed.
1122 Test-new-install: mark show
1123 Relevance: 8
1124 Packages: for-current-hardware
1125 </pre></blockquote></p>
1126
1127 <p>The second part is in
1128 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1129 this:</p>
1130
1131 <p><blockquote><pre>
1132 #!/bin/sh
1133 #
1134 (
1135     isenkram-lookup
1136     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1137 ) | sort -u
1138 </pre></blockquote></p>
1139
1140 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1141 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1142 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1143 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1144 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1145 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1146
1147 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1148 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1149 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1150 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1151 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1153 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1154 the python-apt code (bug
1155 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1156 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1157 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1158 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1159 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1160 unstable today.</p>
1161
1162 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1163 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1164 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1165 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1166 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1167 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1168 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1169 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1170 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1171
1172 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1173 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1174 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1175 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1176 package.  See also
1177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1178 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1179 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1180 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1181
1182       </div>
1183       <div class="tags">
1184
1185
1186         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>.
1187
1188
1189       </div>
1190     </div>
1191     <div class="padding"></div>
1192
1193     <div class="entry">
1194       <div class="title">
1195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="date">
1198         15th April 2014
1199       </div>
1200       <div class="body">
1201         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1202 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1203 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1204 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1205 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1206 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1207
1208 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1209 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1210 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1211 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1212 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1213 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1214 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1215
1216 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1217 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1218 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1219 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1220 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1221 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1222 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1223 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1224 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1225 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1226 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1227 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1228
1229 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1230 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1231 become root:</p>
1232
1233 <p><pre>
1234 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1235   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1236   u-boot-tools
1237 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1238   freedom-maker
1239 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1240 </pre></p>
1241
1242 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1243 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1244 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1245 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1246 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1247 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1248 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1249 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1250
1251 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1252 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1253 the preseed values:</p>
1254
1255 <p><pre>
1256 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1257 </pre></p>
1258
1259 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1260 it still work.</p>
1261
1262 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1263 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1264 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1265 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1266 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1267 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1268 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1269
1270 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1271 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1272 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1273 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1274 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1275 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1276
1277       </div>
1278       <div class="tags">
1279
1280
1281         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>.
1282
1283
1284       </div>
1285     </div>
1286     <div class="padding"></div>
1287
1288     <div class="entry">
1289       <div class="title">
1290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
1291       </div>
1292       <div class="date">
1293          9th April 2014
1294       </div>
1295       <div class="body">
1296         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1297 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1298 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1299 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1300 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1301 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1302 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1303 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1304 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1305 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1306 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1307 have looked at a system called
1308 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1309 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1310
1311 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1312 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1313 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1314 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1315 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1316 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1317 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1318 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1319 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1320 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1321 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1322 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1323 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1324
1325 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1326 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1327 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1328 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1329 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1330 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1331 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1332 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1333 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1334 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1335 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1336 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1337 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1338 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1339 account.</p>
1340
1341 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1342 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1343 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1344 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1345 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
1346 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1347 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1348
1349 <p><blockquote><pre>
1350 [s3c]
1351 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1352 backend-login: API-login
1353 backend-password: API-password
1354 fs-passphrase: local-password
1355 </pre></blockquote></p>
1356
1357 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
1358 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1359 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1360 details and password to create it:</p>
1361
1362 <p><blockquote><pre>
1363 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1364 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1365   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1366 Enter backend login:
1367 Enter backend password:
1368 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1369 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1370 Enter encryption password:
1371 Confirm encryption password:
1372 Generating random encryption key...
1373 Creating metadata tables...
1374 Dumping metadata...
1375 ..objects..
1376 ..blocks..
1377 ..inodes..
1378 ..inode_blocks..
1379 ..symlink_targets..
1380 ..names..
1381 ..contents..
1382 ..ext_attributes..
1383 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1384 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1385 # </pre></blockquote></p>
1386
1387 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1388
1389 <p><blockquote><pre>
1390 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1391   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1392 Using 4 upload threads.
1393 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1394 Reading metadata...
1395 ..objects..
1396 ..blocks..
1397 ..inodes..
1398 ..inode_blocks..
1399 ..symlink_targets..
1400 ..names..
1401 ..contents..
1402 ..ext_attributes..
1403 Mounting filesystem...
1404 # df -h /s3ql
1405 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1406 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1407 #
1408 </pre></blockquote></p>
1409
1410 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1411 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1412 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1413 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1414 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1415 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1416
1417 <p><blockquote><pre>
1418 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1419 #
1420 </pre></blockquote></p>
1421
1422 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1423 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1424 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1425 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1426 file system:</p>
1427
1428 <p><blockquote><pre>
1429 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1430 Using cached metadata.
1431 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1432 Checking DB integrity...
1433 Creating temporary extra indices...
1434 Checking lost+found...
1435 Checking cached objects...
1436 Checking names (refcounts)...
1437 Checking contents (names)...
1438 Checking contents (inodes)...
1439 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1440 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1441 Checking objects (backend)...
1442 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1443 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1444 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1445 Checking objects (sizes)...
1446 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1447 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1448 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1449 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1450 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1451 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1452 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1453 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1454 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1455 Checking directory reachability...
1456 Checking unix conventions...
1457 Checking referential integrity...
1458 Dropping temporary indices...
1459 Backing up old metadata...
1460 Dumping metadata...
1461 ..objects..
1462 ..blocks..
1463 ..inodes..
1464 ..inode_blocks..
1465 ..symlink_targets..
1466 ..names..
1467 ..contents..
1468 ..ext_attributes..
1469 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1470 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1471 #
1472 </pre></blockquote></p>
1473
1474 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1475 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1476 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1477 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1478 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1479 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1480 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1481 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1482 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1483 working set.</p>
1484
1485 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1486 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1487 busy:</p>
1488
1489 <p><blockquote><pre>
1490 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1491   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1492 Using 8 upload threads.
1493 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1494 #
1495 </pre></blockquote></p>
1496
1497 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1498 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1499 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1500 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1501 s3qlctrl:
1502
1503 <p><blockquote><pre>
1504 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1505 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1506 #
1507 </pre></blockquote></p>
1508
1509 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1510 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1511 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1512 a report:</p>
1513
1514 <p><blockquote><pre>
1515 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1516 Directory entries:    9141
1517 Inodes:               9143
1518 Data blocks:          8851
1519 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1520 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1521 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1522 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1523 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1524 #
1525 </pre></blockquote></p>
1526
1527 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1528 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1529 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
1530 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
1531 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
1532 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
1533 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
1534 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1535 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1536 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1537 best.</p>
1538
1539 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1540 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1541 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1542 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1543 poster is titled
1544 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1545 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1546 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1547 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1548 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
1549
1550 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1551 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1552 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1553 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1554 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
1555 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1556 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1557 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1558
1559 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1560 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1561 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1562 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1563 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1564 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1565 only read from it.</p>
1566
1567 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1568 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1569 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1570
1571       </div>
1572       <div class="tags">
1573
1574
1575         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1576
1577
1578       </div>
1579     </div>
1580     <div class="padding"></div>
1581
1582     <div class="entry">
1583       <div class="title">
1584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
1585       </div>
1586       <div class="date">
1587         14th March 2014
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="body">
1590         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1591 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1592 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1593 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1594 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1595 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1596 release (0.2).</p>
1597
1598 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1599 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1600 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1601 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1602 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1603 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1604 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1605 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1606 and build using
1607 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
1608 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1609
1610 <pre>
1611 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1612   freedom-maker
1613 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1614   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1615   u-boot-tools
1616 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1617 </pre>
1618
1619 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1620 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1621 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
1622 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1623 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1624 kpartx call.</p>
1625
1626 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1627 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1628 the preseed values:</p>
1629
1630 <pre>
1631 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1632 </pre>
1633
1634 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1635 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
1636 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1637 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1638 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1639 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
1640
1641 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1642 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1643 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1644 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1645 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1646 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1647
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="tags">
1650
1651
1652         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>.
1653
1654
1655       </div>
1656     </div>
1657     <div class="padding"></div>
1658
1659     <div class="entry">
1660       <div class="title">
1661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="date">
1664         22nd February 2014
1665       </div>
1666       <div class="body">
1667         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1668 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1669 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1670 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1671 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1672 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1673 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1674 proper home since then.</p>
1675
1676 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1677 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1678 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1679 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1680 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1681
1682 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1683 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1684 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1685 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1686 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1687 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1688 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1689 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1690 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1691
1692       </div>
1693       <div class="tags">
1694
1695
1696         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>.
1697
1698
1699       </div>
1700     </div>
1701     <div class="padding"></div>
1702
1703     <div class="entry">
1704       <div class="title">
1705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1706       </div>
1707       <div class="date">
1708          3rd February 2014
1709       </div>
1710       <div class="body">
1711         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1712 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1713 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1714 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1715 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1716 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1717 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1718 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
1719 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1720
1721 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1722 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1723 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1724 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1725 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1726 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
1727
1728 <p><blockquote><pre>
1729 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1730 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
1731 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
1732 dhclient /dev/eth0
1733 </pre></blockquote></p>
1734
1735 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1736 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1737 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
1738
1739 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1740 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1741 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1742 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
1743 side.</p>
1744
1745 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1746 stuff:</p>
1747
1748 <p><blockquote><pre>
1749 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1750 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1751 EOF
1752 apt-get update
1753 apt-get dist-upgrade
1754 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1755     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1756 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1757 </pre></blockquote></p>
1758
1759 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1760 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
1761 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1762 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1763 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1764 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1765 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
1766 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1767 ssh instead.
1768
1769 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1770 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1771 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1772 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
1773 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1774 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
1775
1776 <p><blockquote><pre>
1777 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
1778 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1779 EOF
1780 </pre></blockquote></p>
1781
1782 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1783 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1784 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1785 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
1786
1787 <p><blockquote><pre>
1788 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
1789 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1790 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
1791 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
1792 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
1793 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1794 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1795 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1796 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1797 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1798 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1799 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1800 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1801 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
1802 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
1803 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1804 #
1805 </pre></blockquote></p>
1806
1807 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1808 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1809 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
1810 command line stuff.<p>
1811
1812       </div>
1813       <div class="tags">
1814
1815
1816         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>.
1817
1818
1819       </div>
1820     </div>
1821     <div class="padding"></div>
1822
1823     <div class="entry">
1824       <div class="title">
1825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
1826       </div>
1827       <div class="date">
1828         14th January 2014
1829       </div>
1830       <div class="body">
1831         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
1832 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1833 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1834 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1835 the source.  The company behind it provide
1836 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
1837 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
1838 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1839 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1840 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
1841 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
1842 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
1843 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1844 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
1845 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
1846 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
1847 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
1848 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1849 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1850 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1851 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
1852 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
1853 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
1854 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
1855
1856 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
1857
1858 <ul>
1859
1860   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
1861   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
1862   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
1863
1864 </ul>
1865
1866 <p>You can
1867 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1868 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1869 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1870 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1871 include a test suite check.</p>
1872
1873       </div>
1874       <div class="tags">
1875
1876
1877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1878
1879
1880       </div>
1881     </div>
1882     <div class="padding"></div>
1883
1884     <div class="entry">
1885       <div class="title">
1886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
1887       </div>
1888       <div class="date">
1889         24th November 2013
1890       </div>
1891       <div class="body">
1892         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1893 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1894 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1895 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1896 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
1897 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1898 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
1899 is working on.  I checked the
1900 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
1901 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
1902 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
1903 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1904 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1905 These are the release notes:</p>
1906
1907 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
1908
1909 <ul>
1910
1911   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1912    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1913    up.</li>
1914
1915   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
1916
1917   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1918    Matthias Klose.</li>
1919
1920   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1921    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
1922
1923   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1924    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
1925    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
1926
1927 </ul>
1928
1929 <p>You can
1930 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1931 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
1932 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
1933 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1934 include a testsuite check.</p>
1935
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="tags">
1938
1939
1940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1941
1942
1943       </div>
1944     </div>
1945     <div class="padding"></div>
1946
1947     <div class="entry">
1948       <div class="title">
1949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="date">
1952          2nd November 2013
1953       </div>
1954       <div class="body">
1955         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1956 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1957 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1958 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1959 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
1960
1961 <p><pre>
1962 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1963 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
1964 # Provides:          rsyslog
1965 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
1966 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
1967 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
1968 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
1969 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
1970 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1971 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1972 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1973 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
1974 ### END INIT INFO
1975 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1976 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1977 </pre></p>
1978
1979 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1980 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
1981 info/comments.</p>
1982
1983 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
1984 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1985
1986 <p><pre>
1987 #!/bin/sh
1988
1989 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1990 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
1991 # and status_of_proc is working.
1992 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1993
1994 #
1995 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1996
1997 #
1998 do_start()
1999 {
2000         # Return
2001         #   0 if daemon has been started
2002         #   1 if daemon was already running
2003         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2004         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2005                 || return 1
2006         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2007                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2008                 || return 2
2009         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2010         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2011         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2012 }
2013
2014 #
2015 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2016 #
2017 do_stop()
2018 {
2019         # Return
2020         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2021         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2022         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2023         #   other if a failure occurred
2024         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2025         RETVAL="$?"
2026         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2027         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2028         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2029         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2030         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2031         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2032         # sleep for some time.
2033         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2034         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2035         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2036         rm -f $PIDFILE
2037         return "$RETVAL"
2038 }
2039
2040 #
2041 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2042 #
2043 do_reload() {
2044         #
2045         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2046         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2047         # then implement that here.
2048         #
2049         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2050         return 0
2051 }
2052
2053 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2054 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2055 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2056 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2057     script="$1"
2058     shift
2059     . $script
2060 else
2061     exit 0
2062 fi
2063
2064 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2065 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2066
2067 # Exit if the package is not installed
2068 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2069
2070 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2071 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2072
2073 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2074 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2075
2076 case "$1" in
2077   start)
2078         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2079         do_start
2080         case "$?" in
2081                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2082                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2083         esac
2084         ;;
2085   stop)
2086         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2087         do_stop
2088         case "$?" in
2089                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2090                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2091         esac
2092         ;;
2093   status)
2094         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2095         ;;
2096   #reload|force-reload)
2097         #
2098         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2099         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2100         #
2101         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2102         #do_reload
2103         #log_end_msg $?
2104         #;;
2105   restart|force-reload)
2106         #
2107         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2108         # 'force-reload' alias
2109         #
2110         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2111         do_stop
2112         case "$?" in
2113           0|1)
2114                 do_start
2115                 case "$?" in
2116                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2117                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2118                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2119                 esac
2120                 ;;
2121           *)
2122                 # Failed to stop
2123                 log_end_msg 1
2124                 ;;
2125         esac
2126         ;;
2127   *)
2128         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2129         exit 3
2130         ;;
2131 esac
2132
2133 :
2134 </pre></p>
2135
2136 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2137 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2138 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2139 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2140
2141 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2142 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2143 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2144 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2145 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2146
2147       </div>
2148       <div class="tags">
2149
2150
2151         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>.
2152
2153
2154       </div>
2155     </div>
2156     <div class="padding"></div>
2157
2158     <div class="entry">
2159       <div class="title">
2160         <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>
2161       </div>
2162       <div class="date">
2163          1st November 2013
2164       </div>
2165       <div class="body">
2166         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2167 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2168 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2169 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2170 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2171 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2172 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2173 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2174 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2175 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2176 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2177 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2178
2179 <p>The source is now available from
2180 <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>
2181
2182       </div>
2183       <div class="tags">
2184
2185
2186         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>.
2187
2188
2189       </div>
2190     </div>
2191     <div class="padding"></div>
2192
2193     <div class="entry">
2194       <div class="title">
2195         <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>
2196       </div>
2197       <div class="date">
2198         27th October 2013
2199       </div>
2200       <div class="body">
2201         <p>The
2202 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2203 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2204 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2205 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2206 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2207 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2208 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2209 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2210 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2211 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2212 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2213 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2214
2215 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2216 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2217 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2218 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2219 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2220 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2221 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2222 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2223 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2224 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2225 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2226 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2227 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2228 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2229 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2230 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2231 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2232 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2233 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2234 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2235 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2236 available from
2237 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2238 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2239
2240 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2241 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2242 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2243 list:</p>
2244
2245 <p><pre>
2246 #!/bin/sh
2247 set -e # Exit on first error
2248 rootdir="$1"
2249 cd "$rootdir"
2250 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2251 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2252 EOF
2253 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2254 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2255 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2256     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2257 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2258 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2259 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2260 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2261 </pre></p>
2262
2263 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2264 to build the image:</p>
2265
2266 <pre>
2267 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2268     --variant minbase \
2269     --arch armel \
2270     --distribution jessie \
2271     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2272     --image test.img \
2273     --size 600M \
2274     --bootsize 64M \
2275     --boottype vfat \
2276     --log-level debug \
2277     --verbose \
2278     --no-kernel \
2279     --no-extlinux \
2280     --root-password raspberry \
2281     --hostname raspberrypi \
2282     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2283     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2284     --package netbase \
2285     --package git-core \
2286     --package binutils \
2287     --package ca-certificates \
2288     --package wget \
2289     --package kmod
2290 </pre></p>
2291
2292 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2293 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2294 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2295 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2296 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2297 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2298 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2299
2300 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2301 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2302 build dependency list.</p>
2303
2304 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2305 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2306 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2307 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2308
2309       </div>
2310       <div class="tags">
2311
2312
2313         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>.
2314
2315
2316       </div>
2317     </div>
2318     <div class="padding"></div>
2319
2320     <div class="entry">
2321       <div class="title">
2322         <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>
2323       </div>
2324       <div class="date">
2325         15th October 2013
2326       </div>
2327       <div class="body">
2328         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2329 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2330 these. :)</p>
2331
2332 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2333 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2334 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2335 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2336 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2337 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2338 hope you will to. :)</p>
2339
2340 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2341 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2342 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2343 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2344 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2345
2346 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2347 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2348 statement under the heading
2349 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2350 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2351 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2352 too.</p>
2353
2354       </div>
2355       <div class="tags">
2356
2357
2358         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>.
2359
2360
2361       </div>
2362     </div>
2363     <div class="padding"></div>
2364
2365     <div class="entry">
2366       <div class="title">
2367         <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>
2368       </div>
2369       <div class="date">
2370         27th September 2013
2371       </div>
2372       <div class="body">
2373         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2374 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2375 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2376 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2377
2378 <ul>
2379
2380 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2381 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2382
2383 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2384 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2385
2386 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2387 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2388 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2389 (Youtube)</li>
2390
2391 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2392 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2393
2394 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2395 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2396
2397 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2398 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2399 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2400
2401 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2402 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2403 (Youtube)</li>
2404
2405 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2406 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2407
2408 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2409 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2410
2411 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2412 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2413 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2414
2415 </ul>
2416
2417 <p>A larger list is available from
2418 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2419 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2420
2421 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2422 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2423 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2424 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2425 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2426 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2427 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2428 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2429 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2430 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2431 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2432
2433       </div>
2434       <div class="tags">
2435
2436
2437         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>.
2438
2439
2440       </div>
2441     </div>
2442     <div class="padding"></div>
2443
2444     <div class="entry">
2445       <div class="title">
2446         <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>
2447       </div>
2448       <div class="date">
2449         10th September 2013
2450       </div>
2451       <div class="body">
2452         <p>I was introduced to the
2453 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2454 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2455 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2456 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2457 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2458 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2459 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2460 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2461
2462 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2463 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2464 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2465 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2466 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2467
2468 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2469 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2470 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2471 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2472 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2473 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2474 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2475 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2476 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2477 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2478 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2479 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2480 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2481 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2482 missing in Debian).</p>
2483
2484 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2485 scripts
2486 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2487 and a administrative web interface
2488 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2489 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2490 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2491 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2492 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2493 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2494 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2495 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2496 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2497 this is really working yet, see
2498 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2499 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2500 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2501 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2502 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2503 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2504 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2505
2506 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2507 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2508 at.</p>
2509
2510 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2511
2512 <ol>
2513
2514 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2515 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2516 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2517 to the Debian installer:<p>
2518 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2519
2520 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2521 install on.</li>
2522
2523 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2524 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2525
2526 </ol>
2527
2528 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2529
2530 <ol>
2531
2532 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2533 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2534 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2535 <pre>
2536 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2537 </pre></li>
2538 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2539 <pre>
2540 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2541    apt-key add -
2542 apt-get update
2543 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2544 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2545 </pre></li>
2546 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2547
2548 </ol>
2549
2550 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2551 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2552 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2553 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2554 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2555
2556 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2557 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2558 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2559 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2560
2561 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2562 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2563 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2564 irc.debian.org and the
2565 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2566 mailing list</a>.</p>
2567
2568 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2569 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2570 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2571 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2572 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2573 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2574
2575       </div>
2576       <div class="tags">
2577
2578
2579         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>.
2580
2581
2582       </div>
2583     </div>
2584     <div class="padding"></div>
2585
2586     <div class="entry">
2587       <div class="title">
2588         <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>
2589       </div>
2590       <div class="date">
2591         18th August 2013
2592       </div>
2593       <div class="body">
2594         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2595 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2596 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2597 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2598 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2599 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2600 currently on the disk.</p>
2601
2602 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2603 <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>
2604 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2605 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2606 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2607 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2608 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2609 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2610 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2611 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2612 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2613 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2614 the broken disks.</p>
2615
2616       </div>
2617       <div class="tags">
2618
2619
2620         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>.
2621
2622
2623       </div>
2624     </div>
2625     <div class="padding"></div>
2626
2627     <div class="entry">
2628       <div class="title">
2629         <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>
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="date">
2632         17th July 2013
2633       </div>
2634       <div class="body">
2635         <p>Today I switched to
2636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2637 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2638 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2639 <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
2640 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2641 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2642 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2643 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2644 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2645 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2646 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2647 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2648 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2649 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2650 station from now on.</p>
2651
2652 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2653 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2654 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2655 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2656 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2657 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2658 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2659 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2660 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2661 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2662 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2663 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2664
2665 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2666 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2667 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2668 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2669 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2670 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2671 parameters are tuned:</p>
2672
2673 <ul>
2674
2675 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2676     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2677
2678 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2679     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2680     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2681
2682 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2683     systems.</li>
2684
2685 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2686     /etc/fstab.</li>
2687
2688 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2689
2690 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2691     cron.daily).</li>
2692
2693 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2694     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2695
2696 </ul>
2697
2698 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2699 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2700 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2701 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2702 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2703 from getting the data on the disk (see
2704 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2705 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2706 right thing to do.</p>
2707
2708 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2709 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2710 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2711
2712 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2713 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2714 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2715 instead of during my work.</p>
2716
2717 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2718 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2719
2720 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2721 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2722 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2723
2724 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2725 there.</p>
2726
2727 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2728 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2729 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2730 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2731 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2732 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2733 back.</p>
2734
2735       </div>
2736       <div class="tags">
2737
2738
2739         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>.
2740
2741
2742       </div>
2743     </div>
2744     <div class="padding"></div>
2745
2746     <div class="entry">
2747       <div class="title">
2748         <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>
2749       </div>
2750       <div class="date">
2751         10th July 2013
2752       </div>
2753       <div class="body">
2754         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2755 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
2756 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2757 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2758 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
2759 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2760 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
2761 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2762
2763 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2764 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
2765 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
2766 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2767 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2768 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
2769 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
2770 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
2771 lock up when I download a new
2772 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2773 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2774 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2775
2776 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2777 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2778 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2779 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2780 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2781 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2782
2783 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2784 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
2785 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2786 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2787 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
2788 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
2789
2790 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2791 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
2792 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2793 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2794 exist).</p>
2795
2796       </div>
2797       <div class="tags">
2798
2799
2800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2801
2802
2803       </div>
2804     </div>
2805     <div class="padding"></div>
2806
2807     <div class="entry">
2808       <div class="title">
2809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="date">
2812          9th July 2013
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="body">
2815         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
2816 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2817 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2818 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
2819 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2820 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2821 Bitraf</a>.</p>
2822
2823 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
2824 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
2825 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
2826 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2827 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
2828
2829       </div>
2830       <div class="tags">
2831
2832
2833         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>.
2834
2835
2836       </div>
2837     </div>
2838     <div class="padding"></div>
2839
2840     <div class="entry">
2841       <div class="title">
2842         <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>
2843       </div>
2844       <div class="date">
2845          5th July 2013
2846       </div>
2847       <div class="body">
2848         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2849 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2850 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
2851 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2852 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
2853 ended up picking a
2854 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
2855 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2856 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
2857 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
2858 on that below.</p>
2859
2860 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2861 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2862 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2863 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2864 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2865 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2866 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2867 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
2868 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
2869
2870 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2871 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2872 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2873 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
2874 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2875 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2876 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
2877
2878 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
2879 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
2880
2881 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
2882 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2883 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2884 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2885 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2886 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
2887 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2888 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2889 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
2890 kernel developers as
2891 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2892 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
2893 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2894 Lenovo forums, both for
2895 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2896 2012-11-10</a> and for
2897 <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
2898 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
2899 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2900 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2901 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2902 There is even a
2903 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2904 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2905 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
2906
2907 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2908 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
2909 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2910 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2911 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
2912 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2913 fixed. :)</p>
2914
2915       </div>
2916       <div class="tags">
2917
2918
2919         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>.
2920
2921
2922       </div>
2923     </div>
2924     <div class="padding"></div>
2925
2926     <div class="entry">
2927       <div class="title">
2928         <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>
2929       </div>
2930       <div class="date">
2931          4th July 2013
2932       </div>
2933       <div class="body">
2934         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2935 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2936 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
2937 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2938 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
2939 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
2940 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2941 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2942 with an expencive door stop.</p>
2943
2944 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2945 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2946 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
2947 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
2948 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2949 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2950 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
2951
2952 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2953 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2954 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
2955 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2956 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2957 new laptop now. :)</p>
2958
2959 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
2960
2961       </div>
2962       <div class="tags">
2963
2964
2965         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>.
2966
2967
2968       </div>
2969     </div>
2970     <div class="padding"></div>
2971
2972     <div class="entry">
2973       <div class="title">
2974         <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>
2975       </div>
2976       <div class="date">
2977         25th June 2013
2978       </div>
2979       <div class="body">
2980         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2981 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2982 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2983 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
2984 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2985 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
2986 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
2987 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2988 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2989 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2990 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
2991
2992 <p><pre>
2993 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2994 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2995 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2996 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2997 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2998 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2999 firmware-ipw2x00
3000 firmware-ipw2x00
3001 Preconfiguring packages ...
3002 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3003 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3004 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3005 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3006 #
3007 </pre></p>
3008
3009 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3010 printed instead:</p>
3011
3012 <p><pre>
3013 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3014 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3015 #
3016 </pre></p>
3017
3018 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3019 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3020
3021 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3022 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3023 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3024 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3025 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3026 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3027 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3028 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3029 machine.</p>
3030
3031 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3032 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3033 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3034 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3035 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3036 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3037
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="tags">
3040
3041
3042         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>.
3043
3044
3045       </div>
3046     </div>
3047     <div class="padding"></div>
3048
3049     <div class="entry">
3050       <div class="title">
3051         <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>
3052       </div>
3053       <div class="date">
3054         11th June 2013
3055       </div>
3056       <div class="body">
3057         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3058 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3059 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3060 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3061 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3062 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3063 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3064 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3065 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3066 i915 driver used by the
3067 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3068 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3069
3070 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3071 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3072 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3073 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3074 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3075
3076 <pre>
3077 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3078 update-initramfs -u -k all
3079 </pre>
3080
3081 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3082 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3083 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3084 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3085 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3086 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3087 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3088 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3089 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3090 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3091 number.</p>
3092
3093 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3094 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3095
3096 <p><pre>
3097 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3098     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3099     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3100  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3101  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3102     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3103  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3104     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3105  Latency: 0
3106  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3107  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3108  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3109  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3110  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3111  Capabilities: <access denied>
3112  Kernel driver in use: i915
3113 </pre></p>
3114
3115 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3116
3117 <p><pre>
3118 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3119        ...
3120         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3121         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3122        ...
3123 }
3124 </pre></p>
3125
3126 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3127 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3128 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3129 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3130 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3131 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3132 yet shown up in
3133 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3134 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3135 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3136 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3137 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3138 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3139
3140 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3141 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3142 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3143 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3144 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3145 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3146 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3147 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3148 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3149 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3150 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3151 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3152
3153 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3154 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3155 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3156 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3157 backlight.</p>
3158
3159       </div>
3160       <div class="tags">
3161
3162
3163         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>.
3164
3165
3166       </div>
3167     </div>
3168     <div class="padding"></div>
3169
3170     <div class="entry">
3171       <div class="title">
3172         <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>
3173       </div>
3174       <div class="date">
3175         27th May 2013
3176       </div>
3177       <div class="body">
3178         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3179 <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
3180 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3181 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3182 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3183 and Windows 8.</p>
3184
3185 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3186 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3187 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3188 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3189 enough to tell.</p>
3190
3191 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3192 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3193 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3194 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3195 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3196 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3197 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3198 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3199 to follow.</p>
3200
3201 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3202 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3203 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3204 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3205 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3206 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3207 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3208 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3209
3210 <p>I've updated the
3211 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3212 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3213 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3214 machine.</p>
3215
3216 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3217 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3218
3219       </div>
3220       <div class="tags">
3221
3222
3223         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>.
3224
3225
3226       </div>
3227     </div>
3228     <div class="padding"></div>
3229
3230     <div class="entry">
3231       <div class="title">
3232         <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>
3233       </div>
3234       <div class="date">
3235         25th May 2013
3236       </div>
3237       <div class="body">
3238         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3239 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3240 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3241 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3242 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3243 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3244
3245 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3246 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3247 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3248 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3249 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3250 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3251 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3252 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3253 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3254 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3255
3256 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3257 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3258 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3259 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3260 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3261 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3262
3263 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3264 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3265 on new Laptops?</p>
3266
3267       </div>
3268       <div class="tags">
3269
3270
3271         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>.
3272
3273
3274       </div>
3275     </div>
3276     <div class="padding"></div>
3277
3278     <div class="entry">
3279       <div class="title">
3280         <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>
3281       </div>
3282       <div class="date">
3283         17th May 2013
3284       </div>
3285       <div class="body">
3286         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3287 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3288 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3289 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3290 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3291 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3292 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3293 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3294 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3295 donate some money</a>.
3296
3297 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3298 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3299 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3300 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3301 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3302
3303 <p>The script,
3304 <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/>
3305 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3306 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3307 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3308
3309 <ol>
3310
3311 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3312 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3313 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3314     our configuration.</li>
3315 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3316     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3317     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3318     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3319 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3320     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3321 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3322
3323 </ol>
3324
3325 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3326 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3327 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3328 the needed packages.</p>
3329
3330 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3331 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3332 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3333 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3334 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3335 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3336
3337 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3338 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3339 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3340
3341 <p><pre>
3342 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3343 DESKTOP="lxde"
3344 </pre></p>
3345
3346 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3347 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3348 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3349 boot.</p>
3350
3351       </div>
3352       <div class="tags">
3353
3354
3355         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>.
3356
3357
3358       </div>
3359     </div>
3360     <div class="padding"></div>
3361
3362     <div class="entry">
3363       <div class="title">
3364         <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>
3365       </div>
3366       <div class="date">
3367         11th May 2013
3368       </div>
3369       <div class="body">
3370         <P>In January,
3371 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3372 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3373 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3374 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3375 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3376 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3377 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3378 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3379 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3380 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3381 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3382 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3383
3384 <p><table>
3385 <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>
3386 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3387 <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>
3388 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3389 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3390 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3391 <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>
3392 <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>
3393 <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>
3394 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3395 </table></p>
3396
3397 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3398 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3399 available in experimental.</p>
3400
3401 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3402 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3403 for LEGO designers.</p>
3404
3405       </div>
3406       <div class="tags">
3407
3408
3409         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>.
3410
3411
3412       </div>
3413     </div>
3414     <div class="padding"></div>
3415
3416     <div class="entry">
3417       <div class="title">
3418         <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>
3419       </div>
3420       <div class="date">
3421          5th May 2013
3422       </div>
3423       <div class="body">
3424         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3425 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3426 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3427 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3428 soon.</p>
3429
3430 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3431 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3432 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3433 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3434 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3435 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3436 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3437 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3438 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3439 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3440 Edu.</a>
3441
3442 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3443 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3444 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3445 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3446 follow.<p>
3447
3448       </div>
3449       <div class="tags">
3450
3451
3452         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>.
3453
3454
3455       </div>
3456     </div>
3457     <div class="padding"></div>
3458
3459     <div class="entry">
3460       <div class="title">
3461         <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>
3462       </div>
3463       <div class="date">
3464          3rd April 2013
3465       </div>
3466       <div class="body">
3467         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3468 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3469 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3470 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3471
3472 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3473 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3474 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3475 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3476 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3477 BTS. :)</p>
3478
3479       </div>
3480       <div class="tags">
3481
3482
3483         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>.
3484
3485
3486       </div>
3487     </div>
3488     <div class="padding"></div>
3489
3490     <div class="entry">
3491       <div class="title">
3492         <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>
3493       </div>
3494       <div class="date">
3495          2nd February 2013
3496       </div>
3497       <div class="body">
3498         <p>My
3499 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
3500 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
3501 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
3502 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3503 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
3504 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3505 version too.</p>
3506
3507 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3508 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3509 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3510 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3511 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
3512 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3513 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
3514 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
3515
3516 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3517 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3518 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
3519 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3520 it. :)</p>
3521
3522 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3523 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3524 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3525
3526       </div>
3527       <div class="tags">
3528
3529
3530         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>.
3531
3532
3533       </div>
3534     </div>
3535     <div class="padding"></div>
3536
3537     <div class="entry">
3538       <div class="title">
3539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
3540       </div>
3541       <div class="date">
3542         22nd January 2013
3543       </div>
3544       <div class="body">
3545         <p>Yesterday, I
3546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
3547 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3548 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3549 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
3550 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
3551 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3552 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3553 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3554 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
3555 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3556 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
3557 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
3558 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
3559
3560 <pre>
3561 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3562 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
3563 </pre>
3564
3565 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
3566 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3567 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3568 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
3569
3570 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3571 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
3572 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3573 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3574 word.</p>
3575
3576 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
3577 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3578 process.</p>
3579
3580 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3581 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
3582
3583       </div>
3584       <div class="tags">
3585
3586
3587         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>.
3588
3589
3590       </div>
3591     </div>
3592     <div class="padding"></div>
3593
3594     <div class="entry">
3595       <div class="title">
3596         <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>
3597       </div>
3598       <div class="date">
3599         21st January 2013
3600       </div>
3601       <div class="body">
3602         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
3603 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
3604 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
3605 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
3606 it, fetch the
3607 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
3608 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
3609 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
3610 autostart script.</p>
3611
3612 <p>The design is simple:</p>
3613
3614 <ul>
3615
3616 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3617 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
3618
3619 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3620 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3621 initially did.</li>
3622
3623 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3624 the APT database, a database
3625 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
3626 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
3627
3628 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3629 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3630 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3631 package or packages.</li>
3632
3633 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
3634 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
3635
3636 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3637 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
3638
3639 </ul>
3640
3641 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
3642 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
3643 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3644 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
3645
3646 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
3647 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
3648 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
3649 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
3650 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
3651
3652 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3653 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
3654 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3655 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3656 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3657 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3658 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3659 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
3660
3661 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
3662 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3663 '<tt>svn checkout
3664 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3665 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
3666 devscripts package.</p>
3667
3668 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
3669 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3670 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3671 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
3672 instructions</a> for details.</p>
3673
3674       </div>
3675       <div class="tags">
3676
3677
3678         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>.
3679
3680
3681       </div>
3682     </div>
3683     <div class="padding"></div>
3684
3685     <div class="entry">
3686       <div class="title">
3687         <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>
3688       </div>
3689       <div class="date">
3690         19th January 2013
3691       </div>
3692       <div class="body">
3693         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3694 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3695 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3696 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3697 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3698 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3699 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3700 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3701 not a durable solution.
3702
3703 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3704 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
3705
3706 <ul>
3707
3708 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3709   than A4).</li>
3710 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
3711 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
3712 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
3713 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
3714 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
3715 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
3716 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
3717 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
3718 size).</li>
3719 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3720   X.org packages.</li>
3721 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3722   the time).
3723
3724 </ul>
3725
3726 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3727 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3728 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3729 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
3730 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3731 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3732 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3733 still be useful.</p>
3734
3735 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3736 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
3737 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
3738 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3739 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
3740 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
3741
3742       </div>
3743       <div class="tags">
3744
3745
3746         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>.
3747
3748
3749       </div>
3750     </div>
3751     <div class="padding"></div>
3752
3753     <div class="entry">
3754       <div class="title">
3755         <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>
3756       </div>
3757       <div class="date">
3758         18th January 2013
3759       </div>
3760       <div class="body">
3761         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3762 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
3763 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
3764 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3765 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3766 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3767 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
3768
3769 <pre>
3770 #!/usr/bin/python
3771 import sys
3772 import apt
3773 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3774     cache = apt.Cache()
3775     cache.open(None)
3776     thepkgs = []
3777     for pkg in cache:
3778         version = pkg.candidate
3779         if version is None:
3780             version = pkg.installed
3781         if version is None:
3782             continue
3783         record = version.record
3784         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
3785             continue
3786         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
3787         for t in mime_types:
3788             t = t.rstrip().strip()
3789             if t == mimetype:
3790                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3791     return thepkgs
3792 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
3793 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
3794     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
3795 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
3796 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3797     print "  %s" %pkg
3798 </pre>
3799
3800 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
3801
3802 <pre>
3803 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3804 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3805   gecko-mediaplayer
3806 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3807 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3808   browser-plugin-gnash
3809 %
3810 </pre>
3811
3812 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3813 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3814 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
3815 anyone working on adding it?</p>
3816
3817 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
3818 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3819 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
3820 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
3821 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3822 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
3823
3824       </div>
3825       <div class="tags">
3826
3827
3828         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>.
3829
3830
3831       </div>
3832     </div>
3833     <div class="padding"></div>
3834
3835     <div class="entry">
3836       <div class="title">
3837         <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>
3838       </div>
3839       <div class="date">
3840         16th January 2013
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="body">
3843         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
3844 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
3845 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3846 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3847 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
3848 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3849 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3850 downloaded by the browser.</p>
3851
3852 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3853 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3854 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
3855 can be found on the
3856 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
3857 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
3858 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
3859 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3860 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
3861
3862 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
3863
3864 <pre>
3865   count MIME type
3866   ----- -----------------------
3867      32 text/plain
3868      30 audio/mpeg
3869      29 image/png
3870      28 image/jpeg
3871      27 application/ogg
3872      26 audio/x-mp3
3873      25 image/tiff
3874      25 image/gif
3875      22 image/bmp
3876      22 audio/x-wav
3877      20 audio/x-flac
3878      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3879      18 video/x-ms-asf
3880      18 audio/x-musepack
3881      18 audio/x-mpeg
3882      18 application/x-ogg
3883      17 video/mpeg
3884      17 audio/x-scpls
3885      17 audio/ogg
3886      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3887 </pre>
3888
3889 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
3890
3891 <pre>
3892   count MIME type
3893   ----- -----------------------
3894      33 text/plain
3895      32 image/png
3896      32 image/jpeg
3897      29 audio/mpeg
3898      27 image/gif
3899      26 image/tiff
3900      26 application/ogg
3901      25 audio/x-mp3
3902      22 image/bmp
3903      21 audio/x-wav
3904      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3905      19 audio/x-mpeg
3906      18 video/mpeg
3907      18 audio/x-scpls
3908      18 audio/x-flac
3909      18 application/x-ogg
3910      17 video/x-ms-asf
3911      17 text/html
3912      17 audio/x-musepack
3913      16 image/x-xbitmap
3914 </pre>
3915
3916 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
3917
3918 <pre>
3919   count MIME type
3920   ----- -----------------------
3921      31 text/plain
3922      31 image/png
3923      31 image/jpeg
3924      29 audio/mpeg
3925      28 application/ogg
3926      27 image/gif
3927      26 image/tiff
3928      26 audio/x-mp3
3929      23 audio/x-wav
3930      22 image/bmp
3931      21 audio/x-flac
3932      20 audio/x-mpegurl
3933      19 audio/x-mpeg
3934      18 video/x-ms-asf
3935      18 video/mpeg
3936      18 audio/x-scpls
3937      18 application/x-ogg
3938      17 audio/x-musepack
3939      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3940      16 video/x-msvideo
3941 </pre>
3942
3943 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3944 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
3945 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3946 issues.</p>
3947
3948 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
3949 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
3950
3951       </div>
3952       <div class="tags">
3953
3954
3955         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>.
3956
3957
3958       </div>
3959     </div>
3960     <div class="padding"></div>
3961
3962     <div class="entry">
3963       <div class="title">
3964         <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>
3965       </div>
3966       <div class="date">
3967         15th January 2013
3968       </div>
3969       <div class="body">
3970         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
3971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
3972 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
3973 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
3974 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3975 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3976 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3977 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3978 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3979 packages.</p>
3980
3981 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3982 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3983 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3984 modalias.</p>
3985
3986 <p><blockquote>
3987 Package: package-name
3988 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
3989 </blockquote></p>
3990
3991 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3992 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
3993
3994 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
3995 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
3996
3997 <p><blockquote>
3998 Package: cheese
3999 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4000 </blockquote></p>
4001
4002 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4003 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4004
4005 <p><blockquote>
4006 Package: pcmciautils
4007 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4008 </blockquote></p>
4009
4010 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4011 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4012
4013 <p><blockquote>
4014 Package: colorhug-client
4015 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4016 </blockquote></p>
4017
4018 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4019 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4020 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4021
4022 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4023 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4024 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4025 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4026 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4027 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4028 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4029 Raring.</p>
4030
4031 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4032 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4033 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4034 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4035 try the
4036 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4037 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4038 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4039 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4040
4041 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4042 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4043
4044 <p><blockquote>
4045 % ./hw-support-lookup
4046 <br>yubikey-personalization
4047 <br>%
4048 </blockquote></p>
4049
4050 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4051 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4052
4053 <p><blockquote>
4054 % ./hw-support-lookup
4055 <br>pcmciautils
4056 <br>%
4057 </blockquote></p>
4058
4059 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4060 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4061 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4062
4063 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4064 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4065 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4066 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4067 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4068 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4069 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4070 see if it work.</p>
4071
4072 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4073 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4074 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4075 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4076
4077       </div>
4078       <div class="tags">
4079
4080
4081         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>.
4082
4083
4084       </div>
4085     </div>
4086     <div class="padding"></div>
4087
4088     <div class="entry">
4089       <div class="title">
4090         <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>
4091       </div>
4092       <div class="date">
4093         14th January 2013
4094       </div>
4095       <div class="body">
4096         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4097 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4098 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4099 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4100 in
4101 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4102 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4103
4104 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4105
4106 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4107 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4108 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4109 &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;,
4110 &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
4111 &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;.
4112
4113 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4114 this shell script:</p>
4115
4116 <pre>
4117 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4118 </pre>
4119
4120 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4121 using modinfo:</p>
4122
4123 <pre>
4124 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4125 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4126 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4127 %
4128 </pre>
4129
4130 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4131
4132 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4133 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4134
4135 <p><blockquote>
4136 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4137 </blockquote></p>
4138
4139 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4140
4141 <pre>
4142  v   00008086  (vendor)
4143  d   00002770  (device)
4144  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4145  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4146  bc  06        (bus class)
4147  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4148  i   00        (interface)
4149 </pre>
4150
4151 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4152 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4153 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4154 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4155
4156 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4157 means.</p>
4158
4159 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4160
4161 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4162 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4163
4164 <p><blockquote>
4165 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4166 </blockquote></p>
4167
4168 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4169
4170 <pre>
4171  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4172  p    0001  (device product)
4173  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4174  dc     09  (device class)
4175  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4176  dp     00  (device protocol)
4177  ic     09  (interface class)
4178  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4179  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4180 </pre>
4181
4182 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4183 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4184 these alias entries show up:</p>
4185
4186 <p><blockquote>
4187 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4188 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4189 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4190 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4191 </blockquote></p>
4192
4193 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4194 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4195 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4196
4197 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4198
4199 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4200 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4201
4202 <p><blockquote>
4203 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4204 </blockquote></p>
4205
4206 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4207
4208 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4209
4210 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4211 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4212 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4213
4214 <p><blockquote>
4215 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4216 </blockquote></p>
4217
4218 <p>The values present are</p>
4219
4220 <pre>
4221  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4222  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4223  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4224  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4225  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4226  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4227  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4228  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4229  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4230  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4231  ct   10             (chassis type)
4232  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4233 </pre>
4234
4235 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4236 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4237
4238 <pre>
4239   3 Desktop
4240   4 Low Profile Desktop
4241   5 Pizza Box
4242   6 Mini Tower
4243   7 Tower
4244   8 Portable
4245   9 Laptop
4246  10 Notebook
4247  11 Hand Held
4248  12 Docking Station
4249  13 All In One
4250  14 Sub Notebook
4251  15 Space-saving
4252  16 Lunch Box
4253  17 Main Server Chassis
4254  18 Expansion Chassis
4255  19 Sub Chassis
4256  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4257  21 Peripheral Chassis
4258  22 RAID Chassis
4259  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4260  24 Sealed-case PC
4261  25 Multi-system
4262  26 CompactPCI
4263  27 AdvancedTCA
4264  28 Blade
4265  29 Blade Enclosing
4266 </pre>
4267
4268 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4269 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4270 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4271
4272 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4273
4274 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4275 test machine:</p>
4276
4277 <p><blockquote>
4278 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4279 </blockquote></p>
4280
4281 <p>The values present are</p>
4282
4283 <pre>
4284   ty  01  (type)
4285   pr  00  (prototype)
4286   id  00  (id)
4287   ex  00  (extra)
4288 </pre>
4289
4290 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4291 the valid values are.</p>
4292
4293 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4294
4295 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4296 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4297 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4298 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4299 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4300 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4301 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4302
4303 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4304
4305 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4306 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4307
4308 <pre>
4309   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4310     echo "$id" ; \
4311     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4312   done
4313 </pre>
4314
4315 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4316 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4317
4318 <pre>
4319   acpi:ACPI0003:
4320     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4321   acpi:device:
4322   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4323   acpi:IBM0068:
4324     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4325     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4326     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4327     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4328   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4329     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4330     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4331     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4332   [...]
4333 </pre>
4334
4335 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4336 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4337 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4338 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4339
4340 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
4341 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
4342 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
4343
4344       </div>
4345       <div class="tags">
4346
4347
4348         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>.
4349
4350
4351       </div>
4352     </div>
4353     <div class="padding"></div>
4354
4355     <div class="entry">
4356       <div class="title">
4357         <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>
4358       </div>
4359       <div class="date">
4360         10th January 2013
4361       </div>
4362       <div class="body">
4363         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4364 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4365 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4366 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
4367 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4368 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
4369 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4370 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4371 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4372 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
4373 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4374 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4375 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4376 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4377 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4378 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
4379 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
4380 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
4381
4382       </div>
4383       <div class="tags">
4384
4385
4386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4387
4388
4389       </div>
4390     </div>
4391     <div class="padding"></div>
4392
4393     <div class="entry">
4394       <div class="title">
4395         <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>
4396       </div>
4397       <div class="date">
4398          9th January 2013
4399       </div>
4400       <div class="body">
4401         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4402 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4403 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4404 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4405 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4406 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4407 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4408 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4409 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4410 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
4411 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
4412
4413 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
4414 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
4415 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
4416 simple:
4417
4418 <ul>
4419
4420 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4421   starting when a user log in.</li>
4422
4423 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4424   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
4425
4426 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4427   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4428   packages.</li>
4429
4430 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4431   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
4432
4433 </ul>
4434
4435 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
4436 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
4437 discover database to find packages and
4438 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
4439 packages.</p>
4440
4441 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
4442 draft package is now checked into
4443 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4444 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
4445 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
4446 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4447 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4448 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
4449 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
4450 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4451 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
4452 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
4453 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
4454 because of the freeze).</p>
4455
4456 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4457 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4458 inserted):</p>
4459
4460 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
4461
4462 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4463 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
4464 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
4465
4466 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4467 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4468 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
4469 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4470 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4471 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4472 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
4473
4474 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4475 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
4476 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
4477 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4478 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
4479 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
4480 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4481 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
4482 not be installed?</p>
4483
4484 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4485 please send me an email. :)</p>
4486
4487       </div>
4488       <div class="tags">
4489
4490
4491         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>.
4492
4493
4494       </div>
4495     </div>
4496     <div class="padding"></div>
4497
4498     <div class="entry">
4499       <div class="title">
4500         <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>
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="date">
4503          2nd January 2013
4504       </div>
4505       <div class="body">
4506         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4507 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
4508 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4509 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4510 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
4511 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4512 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
4513 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4514 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
4515 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
4516
4517 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
4518 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
4519 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
4520
4521       </div>
4522       <div class="tags">
4523
4524
4525         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>.
4526
4527
4528       </div>
4529     </div>
4530     <div class="padding"></div>
4531
4532     <div class="entry">
4533       <div class="title">
4534         <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>
4535       </div>
4536       <div class="date">
4537         25th December 2012
4538       </div>
4539       <div class="body">
4540         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4541 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
4542
4543 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
4544 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4545 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4546 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4547 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
4548 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
4549 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4550 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
4551 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4552 name.</p>
4553
4554 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4555 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4556 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
4557
4558 <blockquote><pre>
4559 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4560 cd bitcoin
4561 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4562 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4563 </pre></blockquote>
4564
4565 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
4566 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4567 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
4568 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
4569 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
4570 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4571 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4572 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4573 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
4574
4575 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4576 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4577 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4578
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="tags">
4581
4582
4583         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>.
4584
4585
4586       </div>
4587     </div>
4588     <div class="padding"></div>
4589
4590     <div class="entry">
4591       <div class="title">
4592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
4593       </div>
4594       <div class="date">
4595         21st December 2012
4596       </div>
4597       <div class="body">
4598         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
4599 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
4600 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4601 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
4602 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
4603 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
4604 is now maintained by a
4605 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
4606 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
4607 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4608 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4609 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4610 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4611 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
4612 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4613 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4614 Corallo in a
4615 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
4616 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4617 Debian package.</p>
4618
4619 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4620 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4621 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4622 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4623 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4624 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4625 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
4626 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
4627 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4628 new version to unstable.
4629
4630 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4631 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
4632 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4633 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4634 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4635 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4636 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4637 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
4638 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4639 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4640 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
4641 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4642 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4643 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
4644 have not tested them.</p>
4645
4646 <p>My
4647 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
4648 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4649 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4650 years ago, as can be
4651 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
4652 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
4653 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4654 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4655 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
4656 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4657 the same address as last time,
4658 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4659
4660       </div>
4661       <div class="tags">
4662
4663
4664         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>.
4665
4666
4667       </div>
4668     </div>
4669     <div class="padding"></div>
4670
4671     <div class="entry">
4672       <div class="title">
4673         <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>
4674       </div>
4675       <div class="date">
4676          7th September 2012
4677       </div>
4678       <div class="body">
4679         <p>As I
4680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
4681 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4682 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4683 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
4684 repository for the project</a>.</p>
4685
4686 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4687 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4688 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4689 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
4690
4691 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4692 PostScript formats at
4693 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
4694 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
4695
4696       </div>
4697       <div class="tags">
4698
4699
4700         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>.
4701
4702
4703       </div>
4704     </div>
4705     <div class="padding"></div>
4706
4707     <div class="entry">
4708       <div class="title">
4709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
4710       </div>
4711       <div class="date">
4712         16th August 2012
4713       </div>
4714       <div class="body">
4715         <p>I dag fyller
4716 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
4717 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4718 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
4719
4720       </div>
4721       <div class="tags">
4722
4723
4724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4725
4726
4727       </div>
4728     </div>
4729     <div class="padding"></div>
4730
4731     <div class="entry">
4732       <div class="title">
4733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
4734       </div>
4735       <div class="date">
4736         24th June 2012
4737       </div>
4738       <div class="body">
4739         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4740 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
4741 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
4742 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4743 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4744 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
4745 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4746 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4747 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
4748 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
4749 missing in my book.</p>
4750
4751 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4752 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4753 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4754 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
4755 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
4756 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
4757 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
4758
4759       </div>
4760       <div class="tags">
4761
4762
4763         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>.
4764
4765
4766       </div>
4767     </div>
4768     <div class="padding"></div>
4769
4770     <div class="entry">
4771       <div class="title">
4772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
4773       </div>
4774       <div class="date">
4775         21st November 2011
4776       </div>
4777       <div class="body">
4778         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
4779 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
4780 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4781 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
4782 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4783 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4784 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4785 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4786 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4787 the tools to do so.</p>
4788
4789 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4790 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
4791 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4792 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
4793
4794 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4795 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
4796 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
4797 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4798 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4799 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4800 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4801 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
4802
4803 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4804 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4805 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
4806
4807 <p><pre>
4808 #!/usr/bin/perl
4809 use strict;
4810 use warnings;
4811 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4812 BEGIN {
4813     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4814     my %rhelmodules = (
4815         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
4816         );
4817     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4818         eval "use $module;";
4819         if ($@) {
4820             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4821             system("yum install -y $pkg");
4822             eval "use $module;";
4823         }
4824     }
4825 }
4826 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4827
4828 upgrade_dell();
4829
4830 exit 0;
4831
4832 sub run_firmware_script {
4833     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4834     unless ($script) {
4835         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4836         exit 1
4837     }
4838     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4839
4840     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4841         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4842     } else {
4843         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4844     }
4845 }
4846
4847 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4848     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4849     # Run firmware packages
4850     for my $dir (@dirs) {
4851         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4852         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4853         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4854             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4855             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4856         }
4857         closedir $dh;
4858     }
4859 }
4860
4861 sub download {
4862     my $url = shift;
4863     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4864     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4865 }
4866
4867 sub upgrade_dell {
4868     my @dirs;
4869     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4870     chomp $product;
4871
4872     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4873
4874         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4875         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4876
4877         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4878             CLEANUP => 1
4879             );
4880         chdir($tmpdir);
4881         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4882         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4883         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4884         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4885         my $fwopts = "-q";
4886         if (@paths) {
4887             for my $url (@paths) {
4888                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4889             }
4890             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4891         } else {
4892             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4893             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4894         }
4895         chdir('/');
4896     } else {
4897         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4898         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4899     }
4900 }
4901
4902 sub fetch_dell_fw {
4903     my $path = shift;
4904     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4905     download($url);
4906 }
4907
4908 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4909 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
4910 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
4911 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4912     my $filename = shift;
4913
4914     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4915     chomp $product;
4916     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4917
4918     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4919
4920     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4921     my @paths;
4922     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4923         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
4924         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
4925         my $oscode;
4926         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
4927             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
4928         } else {
4929             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
4930         }
4931         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4932         {
4933             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
4934         }
4935     }
4936     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4937         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
4938
4939         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4940         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4941
4942         my $cpath = $component->{path};
4943         for my $path (@paths) {
4944             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4945                 push(@paths, $cpath);
4946             }
4947         }
4948     }
4949     return @paths;
4950 }
4951 </pre>
4952
4953 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4954 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
4955 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
4956 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4957 outdated.</p>
4958
4959       </div>
4960       <div class="tags">
4961
4962
4963         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>.
4964
4965
4966       </div>
4967     </div>
4968     <div class="padding"></div>
4969
4970     <div class="entry">
4971       <div class="title">
4972         <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>
4973       </div>
4974       <div class="date">
4975          4th August 2011
4976       </div>
4977       <div class="body">
4978         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4979 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4980 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
4981 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4982 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
4983 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4984 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
4985 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4986 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
4987
4988 <p><blockquote>
4989 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4990 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4991 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4992 </blockquote></p>
4993
4994 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4995 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
4996 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4997 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4998 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4999 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5000 hard to explain.</p>
5001
5002 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5003 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5004 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5005 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5006 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5007 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5008 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5009 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5010 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5011 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5012 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5013 mode).</p>
5014
5015 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5016 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5017 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5018 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5019 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5020 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5021 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5022 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5023 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5024
5025 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5026 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5027 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5028 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5029 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5030 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5031 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5032 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5033
5034 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5035 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5036 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5037
5038       </div>
5039       <div class="tags">
5040
5041
5042         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>.
5043
5044
5045       </div>
5046     </div>
5047     <div class="padding"></div>
5048
5049     <div class="entry">
5050       <div class="title">
5051         <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>
5052       </div>
5053       <div class="date">
5054         30th July 2011
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="body">
5057         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5058 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
5059 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
5060 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
5061 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5062 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5063 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5064 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5065 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5066 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
5067 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5068 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5069 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5070
5071 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
5072 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5073 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
5074 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
5075 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5076 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5077 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5078 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
5079 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5080
5081 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5082 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5083 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5084 is presented.</p>
5085
5086 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
5087 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5088 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5089 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5090 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5091 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5092 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5093 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
5094 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5095 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5096 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5097 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
5098 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5099 find time to push this forward.</p>
5100
5101       </div>
5102       <div class="tags">
5103
5104
5105         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>.
5106
5107
5108       </div>
5109     </div>
5110     <div class="padding"></div>
5111
5112     <div class="entry">
5113       <div class="title">
5114         <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>
5115       </div>
5116       <div class="date">
5117         29th July 2011
5118       </div>
5119       <div class="body">
5120         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5121 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5122 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
5123 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5124 issues.</p>
5125
5126 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
5127 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
5128 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
5129
5130 <ol>
5131
5132 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
5133 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
5134 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
5135 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
5136 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
5137 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
5138 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
5139 Debian.</li>
5140
5141 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
5142 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
5143 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
5144 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
5145 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
5146 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
5147 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
5148 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
5149 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5150 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
5151 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5152 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5153 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
5154
5155 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5156 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
5157 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5158 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
5159 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
5160 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5161 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
5162 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
5163 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5164 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
5165
5166 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
5167 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5168 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5169 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
5170 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
5171 latter behaviour.</li>
5172
5173 </ol>
5174
5175 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5176 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5177 it do not matter much.</p>
5178
5179 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5180 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
5181 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
5182
5183       </div>
5184       <div class="tags">
5185
5186
5187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5188
5189
5190       </div>
5191     </div>
5192     <div class="padding"></div>
5193
5194     <div class="entry">
5195       <div class="title">
5196         <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>
5197       </div>
5198       <div class="date">
5199         26th July 2011
5200       </div>
5201       <div class="body">
5202         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
5203 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5204 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5205 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5206 security support for a few years.</p>
5207
5208 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5209 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
5210 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5211 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
5212 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
5213 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
5214 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5215 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5216 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5217 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5218 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5219 easier in the future.</p>
5220
5221 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5222 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5223 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
5224 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5225 do not have time for.</p>
5226
5227       </div>
5228       <div class="tags">
5229
5230
5231         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>.
5232
5233
5234       </div>
5235     </div>
5236     <div class="padding"></div>
5237
5238     <div class="entry">
5239       <div class="title">
5240         <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>
5241       </div>
5242       <div class="date">
5243          3rd April 2011
5244       </div>
5245       <div class="body">
5246         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
5247 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5248 update in English.</p>
5249
5250 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5251 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5252 of the British service
5253 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
5254 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
5255 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5256 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
5257 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
5258 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
5259 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5260 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5261 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
5262 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
5263 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
5264 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5265 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
5266
5267 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5268 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
5269 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5270 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
5271 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5272 public infrastructure.</p>
5273
5274 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5275 such service?</p>
5276
5277       </div>
5278       <div class="tags">
5279
5280
5281         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>.
5282
5283
5284       </div>
5285     </div>
5286     <div class="padding"></div>
5287
5288     <div class="entry">
5289       <div class="title">
5290         <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>
5291       </div>
5292       <div class="date">
5293         28th January 2011
5294       </div>
5295       <div class="body">
5296         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5297 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
5298 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5299 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5300 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
5301 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
5302 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5303 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5304 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5305 out which security holes were present in our free software
5306 collection.</p>
5307
5308 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5309 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5310 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
5311 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5312 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5313 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
5314 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5315 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
5316 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5317 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
5318 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
5319 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
5320 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
5321 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5322 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
5323 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
5324
5325 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5326 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5327 check out, one could look up
5328 <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
5329 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5330 The most recent one is
5331 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
5332 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5333 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
5334
5335 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5336 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
5337 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5338 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
5339 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5340 security issues out.</p>
5341
5342 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
5343 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
5344 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
5345 RHEL is providing
5346 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
5347 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
5348 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
5349
5350 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
5351 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
5352 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
5353 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
5354 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
5355 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
5356 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
5357 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
5358 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
5359 established soon.</p>
5360
5361 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
5362 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
5363 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
5364 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
5365 for their packages.</p>
5366
5367       </div>
5368       <div class="tags">
5369
5370
5371         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>.
5372
5373
5374       </div>
5375     </div>
5376     <div class="padding"></div>
5377
5378     <div class="entry">
5379       <div class="title">
5380         <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>
5381       </div>
5382       <div class="date">
5383         23rd January 2011
5384       </div>
5385       <div class="body">
5386         <p>In the
5387 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
5388 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
5389 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
5390 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
5391 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
5392 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
5393 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
5394 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
5395 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
5396 one of my machines like this:</p>
5397
5398 <pre>
5399 loaded modules:
5400 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
5401 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
5402 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
5403 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
5404 10de:03ec pata_amd
5405 10de:03f6 sata_nv
5406 1022:1103 k8temp
5407 109e:036e bttv
5408 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
5409 11ab:4364 sky2
5410 </pre>
5411
5412 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
5413 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
5414
5415 <pre>
5416 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
5417     echo loaded pci modules:
5418     (
5419         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
5420         for address in * ; do
5421             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5422                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5423                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5424                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5425                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
5426                     echo "$id $module"
5427                 fi
5428             fi
5429         done
5430     )
5431     echo
5432 fi
5433 </pre>
5434
5435 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
5436 mappings:</p>
5437
5438 <pre>
5439 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
5440     echo loaded usb modules:
5441     (
5442         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
5443         for address in * ; do
5444             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5445                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5446                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5447                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5448                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
5449                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
5450                         echo "$id $module"
5451                     fi
5452                 fi
5453             fi
5454         done
5455     )
5456     echo
5457 fi
5458 </pre>
5459
5460 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5461 well.</p>
5462
5463       </div>
5464       <div class="tags">
5465
5466
5467         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>.
5468
5469
5470       </div>
5471     </div>
5472     <div class="padding"></div>
5473
5474     <div class="entry">
5475       <div class="title">
5476         <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>
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="date">
5479         22nd December 2010
5480       </div>
5481       <div class="body">
5482         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5483 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5484 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5485 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5486 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5487 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5488 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5489 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5490 university.</p>
5491
5492 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5493 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5494 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5495 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5496 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5497 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5498 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5499 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5500
5501 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5502 I perform on a new model.</p>
5503
5504 <ul>
5505
5506 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5507 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5508 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5509
5510 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5511 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5512
5513 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5514 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5515 reported by the program.</li>
5516
5517 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5518 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5519 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5520 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5521 normally test this by playing
5522 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5523 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5524
5525 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5526 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5527
5528 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5529 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5530
5531 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5532 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5533
5534 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5535 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5536 few.</li>
5537
5538 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5539 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5540 notice this.</li>
5541
5542 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5543 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5544 resume.</li>
5545
5546 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5547 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5548 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5549 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5550 not.</li>
5551
5552 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5553 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5554 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5555 existence.</li>
5556
5557 </ul>
5558
5559 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5560 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5561 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5562 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5563 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5564 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5565 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5566 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5567
5568       </div>
5569       <div class="tags">
5570
5571
5572         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>.
5573
5574
5575       </div>
5576     </div>
5577     <div class="padding"></div>
5578
5579     <div class="entry">
5580       <div class="title">
5581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5582       </div>
5583       <div class="date">
5584         11th December 2010
5585       </div>
5586       <div class="body">
5587         <p>As I continue to explore
5588 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5589 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5590 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5591
5592 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5593 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5594 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5595 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5596 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5597 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5598 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5599 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5600 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5601 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5602 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5603 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5604 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5605 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5606 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5607 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5608 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5609 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5610 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5611 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5612
5613 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5614 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5615 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5616 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5617 If the Skolelinux foundation
5618 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5619 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5620 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5621 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
5622 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5623 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5624 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5625 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5626
5627 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5628 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5629 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5630 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5631 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5632 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5633 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5634 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5635 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5636 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5637 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5638 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5639 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5640 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5641 currencies.</p>
5642
5643 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5644 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5645 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5646 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5647 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5648 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5649 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5650 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5651 BitCoins.  Check out
5652 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5653 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5654 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5655 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5656 yet.</p>
5657
5658 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5659 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5660 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5661 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5662 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5663
5664       </div>
5665       <div class="tags">
5666
5667
5668         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>.
5669
5670
5671       </div>
5672     </div>
5673     <div class="padding"></div>
5674
5675     <div class="entry">
5676       <div class="title">
5677         <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>
5678       </div>
5679       <div class="date">
5680         10th December 2010
5681       </div>
5682       <div class="body">
5683         <p>With this weeks lawless
5684 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5685 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5686 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5687 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5688 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5689 A blog post from
5690 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5691 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5692 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5693 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5694 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5695 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5696 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5697
5698 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5699 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5700 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5701 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5702 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5703 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5704 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5705 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5706 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5707 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5708
5709 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5710 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5711 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5712 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5713 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5714 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5715 you can even get
5716 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5717 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5718 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5719 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5720
5721 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5722 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5723 donations to the address
5724 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5725
5726       </div>
5727       <div class="tags">
5728
5729
5730         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>.
5731
5732
5733       </div>
5734     </div>
5735     <div class="padding"></div>
5736
5737     <div class="entry">
5738       <div class="title">
5739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
5740       </div>
5741       <div class="date">
5742         27th November 2010
5743       </div>
5744       <div class="body">
5745         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5746 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5747 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5748 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5749 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
5750 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5751 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5752 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
5753
5754 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5755 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5756 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
5757 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5758 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5759 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
5760 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
5761 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5762 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
5763 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5764 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
5765
5766 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5767 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5768 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
5769 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5770 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
5771 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5772 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5773 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5774 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5775 what is going on.</p>
5776
5777       </div>
5778       <div class="tags">
5779
5780
5781         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>.
5782
5783
5784       </div>
5785     </div>
5786     <div class="padding"></div>
5787
5788     <div class="entry">
5789       <div class="title">
5790         <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>
5791       </div>
5792       <div class="date">
5793         22nd November 2010
5794       </div>
5795       <div class="body">
5796         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5797 upgrade testing of the
5798 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5799 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
5800 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5801 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
5802
5803 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
5804
5805 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
5806
5807 <blockquote><p>
5808   apache2.2-bin
5809   aptdaemon
5810   baobab
5811   binfmt-support
5812   browser-plugin-gnash
5813   cheese-common
5814   cli-common
5815   cups-pk-helper
5816   dmz-cursor-theme
5817   empathy
5818   empathy-common
5819   freedesktop-sound-theme
5820   freeglut3
5821   gconf-defaults-service
5822   gdm-themes
5823   gedit-plugins
5824   geoclue
5825   geoclue-hostip
5826   geoclue-localnet
5827   geoclue-manual
5828   geoclue-yahoo
5829   gnash
5830   gnash-common
5831   gnome
5832   gnome-backgrounds
5833   gnome-cards-data
5834   gnome-codec-install
5835   gnome-core
5836   gnome-desktop-environment
5837   gnome-disk-utility
5838   gnome-screenshot
5839   gnome-search-tool
5840   gnome-session-canberra
5841   gnome-system-log
5842   gnome-themes-extras
5843   gnome-themes-more
5844   gnome-user-share
5845   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5846   gstreamer0.10-tools
5847   gtk2-engines
5848   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5849   gtk2-engines-smooth
5850   hamster-applet
5851   libapache2-mod-dnssd
5852   libapr1
5853   libaprutil1
5854   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5855   libaprutil1-ldap
5856   libart2.0-cil
5857   libboost-date-time1.42.0
5858   libboost-python1.42.0
5859   libboost-thread1.42.0
5860   libchamplain-0.4-0
5861   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
5862   libcheese-gtk18
5863   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
5864   libcryptui0
5865   libdiscid0
5866   libelf1
5867   libepc-1.0-2
5868   libepc-common
5869   libepc-ui-1.0-2
5870   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5871   libfreerdp0
5872   libgconf2.0-cil
5873   libgdata-common
5874   libgdata7
5875   libgdu-gtk0
5876   libgee2
5877   libgeoclue0
5878   libgexiv2-0
5879   libgif4
5880   libglade2.0-cil
5881   libglib2.0-cil
5882   libgmime2.4-cil
5883   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5884   libgnome2.24-cil
5885   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5886   libgpod-common
5887   libgpod4
5888   libgtk2.0-cil
5889   libgtkglext1
5890   libgtksourceview2.0-common
5891   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5892   libmono-addins0.2-cil
5893   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5894   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5895   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5896   libmono-posix2.0-cil
5897   libmono-security2.0-cil
5898   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5899   libmono-system2.0-cil
5900   libmtp8
5901   libmusicbrainz3-6
5902   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5903   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5904   libopal3.6.8
5905   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
5906   libpt2.6.7
5907   libpython2.6
5908   librpm1
5909   librpmio1
5910   libsdl1.2debian
5911   libsrtp0
5912   libssh-4
5913   libtelepathy-farsight0
5914   libtelepathy-glib0
5915   libtidy-0.99-0
5916   media-player-info
5917   mesa-utils
5918   mono-2.0-gac
5919   mono-gac
5920   mono-runtime
5921   nautilus-sendto
5922   nautilus-sendto-empathy
5923   p7zip-full
5924   pkg-config
5925   python-aptdaemon
5926   python-aptdaemon-gtk
5927   python-axiom
5928   python-beautifulsoup
5929   python-bugbuddy
5930   python-clientform
5931   python-coherence
5932   python-configobj
5933   python-crypto
5934   python-cupshelpers
5935   python-elementtree
5936   python-epsilon
5937   python-evolution
5938   python-feedparser
5939   python-gdata
5940   python-gdbm
5941   python-gst0.10
5942   python-gtkglext1
5943   python-gtksourceview2
5944   python-httplib2
5945   python-louie
5946   python-mako
5947   python-markupsafe
5948   python-mechanize
5949   python-nevow
5950   python-notify
5951   python-opengl
5952   python-openssl
5953   python-pam
5954   python-pkg-resources
5955   python-pyasn1
5956   python-pysqlite2
5957   python-rdflib
5958   python-serial
5959   python-tagpy
5960   python-twisted-bin
5961   python-twisted-conch
5962   python-twisted-core
5963   python-twisted-web
5964   python-utidylib
5965   python-webkit
5966   python-xdg
5967   python-zope.interface
5968   remmina
5969   remmina-plugin-data
5970   remmina-plugin-rdp
5971   remmina-plugin-vnc
5972   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5973   rhythmbox-plugins
5974   rpm-common
5975   rpm2cpio
5976   seahorse-plugins
5977   shotwell
5978   software-center
5979   system-config-printer-udev
5980   telepathy-gabble
5981   telepathy-mission-control-5
5982   telepathy-salut
5983   tomboy
5984   totem
5985   totem-coherence
5986   totem-mozilla
5987   totem-plugins
5988   transmission-common
5989   xdg-user-dirs
5990   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
5991   xserver-xephyr
5992 </p></blockquote>
5993
5994 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
5995
5996 <blockquote><p>
5997   cheese
5998   ekiga
5999   eog
6000   epiphany-extensions
6001   evolution-exchange
6002   fast-user-switch-applet
6003   file-roller
6004   gcalctool
6005   gconf-editor
6006   gdm
6007   gedit
6008   gedit-common
6009   gnome-games
6010   gnome-games-data
6011   gnome-nettool
6012   gnome-system-tools
6013   gnome-themes
6014   gnuchess
6015   gucharmap
6016   guile-1.8-libs
6017   libavahi-ui0
6018   libdmx1
6019   libgalago3
6020   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6021   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6022   liblircclient0
6023   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6024   libspeexdsp1
6025   libsvga1
6026   rhythmbox
6027   seahorse
6028   sound-juicer
6029   system-config-printer
6030   totem-common
6031   transmission-gtk
6032   vinagre
6033   vino
6034 </p></blockquote>
6035
6036 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6037
6038 <blockquote><p>
6039   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6040 </p></blockquote>
6041
6042 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6043
6044 <blockquote><p>
6045 [nothing]
6046 </p></blockquote>
6047
6048 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6049
6050 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6051
6052 <blockquote><p>
6053   ksmserver
6054 </p></blockquote>
6055
6056 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6057
6058 <blockquote><p>
6059   kwin
6060   network-manager-kde
6061 </p></blockquote>
6062
6063 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6064
6065 <blockquote><p>
6066   arts
6067   dolphin
6068   freespacenotifier
6069   google-gadgets-gst
6070   google-gadgets-xul
6071   kappfinder
6072   kcalc
6073   kcharselect
6074   kde-core
6075   kde-plasma-desktop
6076   kde-standard
6077   kde-window-manager
6078   kdeartwork
6079   kdeartwork-emoticons
6080   kdeartwork-style
6081   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6082   kdebase
6083   kdebase-apps
6084   kdebase-workspace
6085   kdebase-workspace-bin
6086   kdebase-workspace-data
6087   kdeeject
6088   kdelibs
6089   kdeplasma-addons
6090   kdeutils
6091   kdewallpapers
6092   kdf
6093   kfloppy
6094   kgpg
6095   khelpcenter4
6096   kinfocenter
6097   konq-plugins-l10n
6098   konqueror-nsplugins
6099   kscreensaver
6100   kscreensaver-xsavers
6101   ktimer
6102   kwrite
6103   libgle3
6104   libkde4-ruby1.8
6105   libkonq5
6106   libkonq5-templates
6107   libnetpbm10
6108   libplasma-ruby
6109   libplasma-ruby1.8
6110   libqt4-ruby1.8
6111   marble-data
6112   marble-plugins
6113   netpbm
6114   nuvola-icon-theme
6115   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6116   plasma-desktop
6117   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6118   plasma-runners-addons
6119   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6120   plasma-scriptengine-python
6121   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6122   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6123   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6124   plasma-scriptengines
6125   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6126   plasma-widget-folderview
6127   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6128   ruby
6129   sweeper
6130   update-notifier-kde
6131   xscreensaver-data-extra
6132   xscreensaver-gl
6133   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6134   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6135 </p></blockquote>
6136
6137 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6138
6139 <blockquote><p>
6140   ark
6141   google-gadgets-common
6142   google-gadgets-qt
6143   htdig
6144   kate
6145   kdebase-bin
6146   kdebase-data
6147   kdepasswd
6148   kfind
6149   klipper
6150   konq-plugins
6151   konqueror
6152   ksysguard
6153   ksysguardd
6154   libarchive1
6155   libcln6
6156   libeet1
6157   libeina-svn-06
6158   libggadget-1.0-0b
6159   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6160   libgps19
6161   libkdecorations4
6162   libkephal4
6163   libkonq4
6164   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6165   libkscreensaver5
6166   libksgrd4
6167   libksignalplotter4
6168   libkunitconversion4
6169   libkwineffects1a
6170   libmarblewidget4
6171   libntrack-qt4-1
6172   libntrack0
6173   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6174   libplasmaclock4a
6175   libplasmagenericshell4
6176   libprocesscore4a
6177   libprocessui4a
6178   libqalculate5
6179   libqedje0a
6180   libqtruby4shared2
6181   libqzion0a
6182   libruby1.8
6183   libscim8c2a
6184   libsmokekdecore4-3
6185   libsmokekdeui4-3
6186   libsmokekfile3
6187   libsmokekhtml3
6188   libsmokekio3
6189   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6190   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6191   libsmokekparts3
6192   libsmokektexteditor3
6193   libsmokekutils3
6194   libsmokenepomuk3
6195   libsmokephonon3
6196   libsmokeplasma3
6197   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6198   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6199   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6200   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6201   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6202   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6203   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6204   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6205   libsmokeqttest4-3
6206   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6207   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6208   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6209   libsmokesolid3
6210   libsmokesoprano3
6211   libtaskmanager4a
6212   libtidy-0.99-0
6213   libweather-ion4a
6214   libxklavier16
6215   libxxf86misc1
6216   okteta
6217   oxygencursors
6218   plasma-dataengines-addons
6219   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6220   plasma-widget-lancelot
6221   plasma-widgets-addons
6222   plasma-widgets-workspace
6223   polkit-kde-1
6224   ruby1.8
6225   systemsettings
6226   update-notifier-common
6227 </p></blockquote>
6228
6229 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6230 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6231 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6232 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6233
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="tags">
6236
6237
6238         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>.
6239
6240
6241       </div>
6242     </div>
6243     <div class="padding"></div>
6244
6245     <div class="entry">
6246       <div class="title">
6247         <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>
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="date">
6250         22nd November 2010
6251       </div>
6252       <div class="body">
6253         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6254 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6255 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6256 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6257 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6258 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6259 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6260 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6261 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6262
6263 <p>I found
6264 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6265 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6266 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6267 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6268 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6269 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6270
6271 <pre>
6272 #!/bin/sh
6273
6274 # Based on
6275 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6276
6277 set -e
6278 set -x
6279
6280 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6281     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6282     exit 1
6283 else
6284     host="$1"
6285 fi
6286
6287 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6288     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6289     exit 1
6290 fi
6291
6292 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6293 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6294 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6295 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6296
6297 img=$host.img
6298 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6299 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6300
6301 parted $img mklabel msdos
6302 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6303 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6304 parted $img set 1 boot on
6305
6306 modprobe dm-mod
6307 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6308 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6309
6310 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6311 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6312 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6313
6314 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6315 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6316 </pre>
6317
6318 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6319 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6320
6321 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6322 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6323 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6324 seem to work just fine.</p>
6325
6326       </div>
6327       <div class="tags">
6328
6329
6330         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>.
6331
6332
6333       </div>
6334     </div>
6335     <div class="padding"></div>
6336
6337     <div class="entry">
6338       <div class="title">
6339         <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>
6340       </div>
6341       <div class="date">
6342         20th November 2010
6343       </div>
6344       <div class="body">
6345         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6346 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6347 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6348 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6349
6350 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6351 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6352 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6353
6354 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6355
6356 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6357
6358 <blockquote><p>
6359   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6360   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6361   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6362   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6363   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6364   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6365   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6366   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6367   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6368   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6369   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6370   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6371   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6372   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6373   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6374   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6375   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6376   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6377   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6378   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6379   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6380   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6381   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6382   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6383   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6384   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6385   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6386   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6387   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6388   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6389   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6390   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6391   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6392   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6393   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6394   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6395   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6396   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6397   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6398   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6399   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6400   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6401   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6402   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6403   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6404   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6405   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6406   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6407   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6408   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6409   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6410   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6411   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6412   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6413   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6414   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6415   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6416   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6417   zip
6418 </p></blockquote>
6419
6420 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6421
6422 <blockquote><p>
6423   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6424   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6425   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6426   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6427   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6428   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6429   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6430   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6431   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6432   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6433   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6434   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6435   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6436   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6437   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6438   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6439   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6440   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6441   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6442   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6443   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6444   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6445   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6446   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6447   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6448   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6449   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6450   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6451   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6452 </p></blockquote>
6453
6454 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6455
6456 <blockquote><p>
6457   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6458 </p></blockquote>
6459
6460 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6461
6462 <blockquote><p>
6463 [nothing]
6464 </p></blockquote>
6465
6466 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6467
6468 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6469
6470 <blockquote><p>
6471   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6472   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6473   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6474   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6475   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6476   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6477   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6478   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6479   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6480   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6481   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6482   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6483   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6484   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6485   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6486   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6487   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6488   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6489   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6490   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6491   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6492   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6493   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6494   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6495   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6496   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6497   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6498   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6499   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6500   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6501 </p></blockquote>
6502
6503 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6504
6505 <blockquote><p>
6506   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6507   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6508   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6509   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6510   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6511   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6512   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6513   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6514   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6515   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6516   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6517   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6518   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6519   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6520   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6521   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6522   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6523   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6524   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6525   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6526   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6527   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6528   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6529   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6530   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6531   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6532   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6533   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6534   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6535   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6536   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6537   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6538   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6539 </p></blockquote>
6540
6541 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6542
6543 <blockquote><p>
6544   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6545   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6546   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6547   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6548   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6549   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6550   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6551 </p></blockquote>
6552
6553 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6554
6555 <blockquote><p>
6556   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6557 </p></blockquote>
6558
6559       </div>
6560       <div class="tags">
6561
6562
6563         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>.
6564
6565
6566       </div>
6567     </div>
6568     <div class="padding"></div>
6569
6570     <div class="entry">
6571       <div class="title">
6572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
6573       </div>
6574       <div class="date">
6575         20th November 2010
6576       </div>
6577       <div class="body">
6578         <p>Answering
6579 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6580 call from the Gnash project</a> for
6581 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
6582 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6583 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6584 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6585 releases out more often.</p>
6586
6587 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6588 I have considered setting up a <a
6589 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
6590 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6591 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6592 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
6593 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6594 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6595 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6596 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
6597 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6598 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6599 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
6600 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
6601
6602       </div>
6603       <div class="tags">
6604
6605
6606         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>.
6607
6608
6609       </div>
6610     </div>
6611     <div class="padding"></div>
6612
6613     <div class="entry">
6614       <div class="title">
6615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
6616       </div>
6617       <div class="date">
6618          9th November 2010
6619       </div>
6620       <div class="body">
6621         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6622
6623 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
6624 3D linked in from
6625 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6626 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
6627
6628       </div>
6629       <div class="tags">
6630
6631
6632         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>.
6633
6634
6635       </div>
6636     </div>
6637     <div class="padding"></div>
6638
6639     <div class="entry">
6640       <div class="title">
6641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
6642       </div>
6643       <div class="date">
6644         24th October 2010
6645       </div>
6646       <div class="body">
6647         <p>Some updates.</p>
6648
6649 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
6650 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
6651 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
6652 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6653 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
6654 :)</p>
6655
6656 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6657 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6658 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6659 It is called
6660 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
6661 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
6662 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6663 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6664 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6665 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
6666
6667 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
6668 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6669 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
6670 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6671 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
6672 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6673 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6674 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
6675 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6676 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
6677
6678       </div>
6679       <div class="tags">
6680
6681
6682         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>.
6683
6684
6685       </div>
6686     </div>
6687     <div class="padding"></div>
6688
6689     <div class="entry">
6690       <div class="title">
6691         <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>
6692       </div>
6693       <div class="date">
6694          4th September 2010
6695       </div>
6696       <div class="body">
6697         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6698 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6699 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
6700 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
6701 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
6702 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6703 installed.</p>
6704
6705 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
6706 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
6707 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6708 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
6709 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6710 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
6711 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6712 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6713 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
6714
6715 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6716 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6717 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
6718 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6719 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6720 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6721 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6722 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6723 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6724 pages they want to visit.</p>
6725
6726 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
6727 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
6728 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
6729 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
6730 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
6731 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
6732 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
6733 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
6734 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
6735 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
6736 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
6737
6738       </div>
6739       <div class="tags">
6740
6741
6742         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>.
6743
6744
6745       </div>
6746     </div>
6747     <div class="padding"></div>
6748
6749     <div class="entry">
6750       <div class="title">
6751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
6752       </div>
6753       <div class="date">
6754         27th July 2010
6755       </div>
6756       <div class="body">
6757         <p>I discovered this while doing
6758 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
6759 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
6760 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
6761 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
6762 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
6763
6764 <p>An example is from todays
6765 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
6766 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
6767 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
6768 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
6769 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
6770 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
6771 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
6772
6773 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
6774
6775 <blockquote><pre>
6776 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
6777  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
6778   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
6779 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
6780  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
6781 </pre></blockquote>
6782
6783 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
6784 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
6785 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
6786 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
6787 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
6788 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
6789 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
6790 of dependency loops.</p>
6791
6792 <p>Thanks to
6793 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
6794 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
6795 dependencies
6796 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
6797 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
6798
6799 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
6800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
6801 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
6802 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
6803 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
6804 it.</p>
6805
6806       </div>
6807       <div class="tags">
6808
6809
6810         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>.
6811
6812
6813       </div>
6814     </div>
6815     <div class="padding"></div>
6816
6817     <div class="entry">
6818       <div class="title">
6819         <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>
6820       </div>
6821       <div class="date">
6822         17th July 2010
6823       </div>
6824       <div class="body">
6825         <p>This is a
6826 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
6827 on my
6828 <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
6829 work</a> on
6830 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
6831 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
6832
6833 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
6834 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
6835 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
6836 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
6837
6838 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
6839 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
6840 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
6841
6842 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
6843
6844 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
6845 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
6846 the web.
6847
6848 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
6849 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
6850 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
6851 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
6852 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
6853 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
6854
6855 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
6856 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
6857 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
6858 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
6859 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
6860 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
6861 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
6862 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
6863 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
6864 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
6865 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
6866 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
6867 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
6868 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
6869 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
6870 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
6871
6872 <blockquote><pre>
6873 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6874   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6875   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6876   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6877   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6878   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6879   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6880
6881 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6882   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6883   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
6884   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
6885   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
6886   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
6887 </pre></blockquote>
6888
6889 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
6890 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
6891 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
6892 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6893 also exist.</p>
6894
6895 <blockquote><pre>
6896 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6897 objectclass: top
6898 objectclass: dnsdomain
6899 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6900 dc: tjener
6901 arecord: 10.0.2.2
6902 associateddomain: tjener.intern
6903
6904 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6905 objectclass: top
6906 objectclass: dnsdomain2
6907 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6908 dc: 2
6909 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
6910 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
6911 </pre></blockquote>
6912
6913 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
6914 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
6915 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
6916 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
6917 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
6918 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
6919 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
6920 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
6921 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
6922 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
6923 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
6924 instead.</p>
6925
6926 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
6927 like this:</p>
6928
6929 <blockquote><pre>
6930 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6931   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6932   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6933   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6934   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6935   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6936
6937 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6938   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
6939 </pre></blockquote>
6940
6941 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
6942 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
6943 reverse lookups.</p>
6944
6945 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
6946 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
6947 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
6948 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
6949
6950 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
6951 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
6952 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
6953
6954 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
6955 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
6956 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
6957 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
6958 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
6959
6960 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
6961 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
6962 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
6963 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
6964 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
6965
6966 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
6967 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
6968 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
6969 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
6970 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
6971 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
6972
6973 <blockquote><pre>
6974 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
6975     SUP top
6976     AUXILIARY
6977     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
6978           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
6979           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
6980           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
6981           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
6982     ))
6983 </pre></blockquote>
6984
6985 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
6986 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
6987 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
6988 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
6989 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
6990 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
6991
6992 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
6993
6994 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
6995 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
6996 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
6997 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
6998 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
6999
7000 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7001 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7002 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7003 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7004
7005 <blockquote><pre>
7006 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7007 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7008 </pre></blockquote>
7009
7010 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7011 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7012 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7013 search result is this entry:</p>
7014
7015 <blockquote><pre>
7016 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7017 cn: dhcp
7018 objectClass: top
7019 objectClass: dhcpServer
7020 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7021 </pre></blockquote>
7022
7023 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7024 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7025 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7026 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7027 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7028 The search result is this entry:</p>
7029
7030 <blockquote><pre>
7031 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7032 cn: DHCP Config
7033 objectClass: top
7034 objectClass: dhcpService
7035 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7036 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7037 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7038 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7039 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7040 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7041 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7042 </pre></blockquote>
7043
7044 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
7045 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
7046 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
7047 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
7048 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
7049 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
7050 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
7051 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
7052 related computer objects.</p>
7053
7054 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
7055 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
7056 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
7057 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
7058 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
7059 like:</p>
7060
7061 <blockquote><pre>
7062 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7063 cn: hostname
7064 objectClass: top
7065 objectClass: dhcpHost
7066 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7067 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
7068 </pre></blockquote>
7069
7070 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
7071 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
7072 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
7073 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
7074 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
7075 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
7076 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
7077 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
7078 structural object class.
7079
7080 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7081
7082 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
7083 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
7084 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
7085 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
7086 in the configuration.</p>
7087
7088 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
7089 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
7090 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
7091 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
7092 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
7093 structure.</p>
7094
7095 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
7096 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
7097
7098 <blockquote><pre>
7099 ou=services
7100   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
7101     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
7102     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7103       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7104         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7105     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7106       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7107         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7108     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
7109       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
7110 </pre></blockquote>
7111
7112 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
7113 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
7114 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
7115 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
7116
7117 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
7118 like this:</p>
7119
7120 <blockquote><pre>
7121 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7122 dc: hostname
7123 objectClass: top
7124 objectClass: dhcpHost
7125 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7126 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
7127 associateddomain: hostname.intern
7128 arecord: 10.11.12.13
7129 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7130 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
7131 </pre></blockquote>
7132
7133 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
7134 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
7135 auxiliary object class.</p>
7136
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="tags">
7139
7140
7141         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>.
7142
7143
7144       </div>
7145     </div>
7146     <div class="padding"></div>
7147
7148     <div class="entry">
7149       <div class="title">
7150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="date">
7153         14th July 2010
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="body">
7156         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
7157 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
7158 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
7159 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
7160 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
7161
7162 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
7163 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
7164
7165 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
7166 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
7167 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
7168 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
7169 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
7170 to a slave DNS server.</p>
7171
7172 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
7173 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
7174 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
7175 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
7176 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
7177 seem to work.</p>
7178
7179 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
7180 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
7181 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
7182 this:</p>
7183
7184 <blockquote><pre>
7185   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7186   cn: hostname
7187   objectClass: dhcphost
7188   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7189   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
7190   associateddomain: hostname.intern
7191   arecord: 10.11.12.13
7192   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7193   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
7194   ldapconfigsound: Y
7195 </pre></blockquote>
7196
7197 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
7198 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
7199 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
7200 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
7201
7202 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
7203 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
7204 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
7205 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
7206 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
7207 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
7208 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
7209 might be a good place to put it.</p>
7210
7211 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7212 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7213
7214       </div>
7215       <div class="tags">
7216
7217
7218         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>.
7219
7220
7221       </div>
7222     </div>
7223     <div class="padding"></div>
7224
7225     <div class="entry">
7226       <div class="title">
7227         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
7228       </div>
7229       <div class="date">
7230         11th July 2010
7231       </div>
7232       <div class="body">
7233         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
7234 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
7235 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
7236 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
7237
7238 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
7239 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
7240 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
7241 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
7242 LTSP clients.</p>
7243
7244 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
7245 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
7246 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
7247
7248 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
7249 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
7250 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
7251
7252 <blockquote><pre>
7253 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
7254 #
7255 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
7256 #
7257 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
7258 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
7259 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
7260 #
7261 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
7262 # existence of attribute names.
7263 #
7264 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
7265 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
7266 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
7267 #
7268 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
7269 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
7270 #
7271 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
7272 #     SUP top
7273 #     AUXILIARY
7274 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
7275
7276 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
7277 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
7278     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
7279     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
7280         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
7281         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
7282             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
7283             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
7284             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
7285             # bass value on to clients
7286             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
7287         done
7288     done
7289 fi
7290 </pre></blockquote>
7291
7292 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
7293 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
7294 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
7295 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
7296 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
7297
7298 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7299 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7300
7301 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
7302 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
7303 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
7304 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
7305 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
7306 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
7307
7308       </div>
7309       <div class="tags">
7310
7311
7312         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>.
7313
7314
7315       </div>
7316     </div>
7317     <div class="padding"></div>
7318
7319     <div class="entry">
7320       <div class="title">
7321         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7322       </div>
7323       <div class="date">
7324          9th July 2010
7325       </div>
7326       <div class="body">
7327         <p>Since
7328 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
7329 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
7330 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
7331 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
7332 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
7333 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
7334 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
7335 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
7336 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
7337 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
7338 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
7339 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
7340 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
7341
7342       </div>
7343       <div class="tags">
7344
7345
7346         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>.
7347
7348
7349       </div>
7350     </div>
7351     <div class="padding"></div>
7352
7353     <div class="entry">
7354       <div class="title">
7355         <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>
7356       </div>
7357       <div class="date">
7358          3rd July 2010
7359       </div>
7360       <div class="body">
7361         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
7362 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
7363 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
7364 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
7365 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
7366 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
7367 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
7368 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
7369
7370 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
7371 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
7372 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
7373 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
7374 publish the difference.</p>
7375
7376 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7377
7378 <blockquote><p>
7379   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7380   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
7381   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
7382   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7383   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
7384   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7385   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
7386   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
7387 </p></blockquote>
7388
7389 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7390
7391 <blockquote><p>
7392   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
7393   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
7394   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
7395   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
7396   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
7397   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
7398   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7399   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7400   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7401   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7402   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
7403   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
7404   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
7405   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
7406   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
7407   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7408   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
7409   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
7410   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
7411   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
7412 </p></blockquote>
7413
7414 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7415
7416 <blockquote><p>
7417   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
7418   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
7419   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7420   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7421   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
7422   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
7423   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
7424   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7425   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7426   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7427   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7428   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
7429   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
7430   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
7431   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
7432   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
7433   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
7434   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
7435   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
7436   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
7437   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
7438 </p></blockquote>
7439
7440 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7441
7442 <blockquote><p>
7443   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
7444   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
7445   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
7446 </p></blockquote>
7447
7448 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
7449 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
7450 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
7451 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
7452 the difference somewhat.
7453
7454       </div>
7455       <div class="tags">
7456
7457
7458         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>.
7459
7460
7461       </div>
7462     </div>
7463     <div class="padding"></div>
7464
7465     <div class="entry">
7466       <div class="title">
7467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7468       </div>
7469       <div class="date">
7470         28th June 2010
7471       </div>
7472       <div class="body">
7473         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
7474 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
7475 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
7476 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
7477 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
7478 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
7479 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
7480 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
7481 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
7482 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
7483
7484 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
7485 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
7486 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
7487 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
7488 released.</p>
7489
7490 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
7491 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
7492 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
7493 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
7494
7495 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
7496 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7497
7498 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
7499 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
7500 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
7501 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
7502 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
7503
7504       </div>
7505       <div class="tags">
7506
7507
7508         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>.
7509
7510
7511       </div>
7512     </div>
7513     <div class="padding"></div>
7514
7515     <div class="entry">
7516       <div class="title">
7517         <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>
7518       </div>
7519       <div class="date">
7520         24th June 2010
7521       </div>
7522       <div class="body">
7523         <p>A while back, I
7524 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
7525 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
7526 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
7527 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
7528
7529 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
7530 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
7531 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
7532 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
7533
7534 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
7535 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
7536 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
7537 Debian Edu.</p>
7538
7539 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
7540 the
7541 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
7542 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
7543 available today from IETF.</p>
7544
7545 <pre>
7546 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
7547 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
7548 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
7549  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
7550         NAME 'dhcpHost'
7551         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
7552 -       SUP top
7553 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
7554         MUST cn
7555         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
7556         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
7557 </pre>
7558
7559 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
7560 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
7561 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
7562
7563 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7564 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7565
7566       </div>
7567       <div class="tags">
7568
7569
7570         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>.
7571
7572
7573       </div>
7574     </div>
7575     <div class="padding"></div>
7576
7577     <div class="entry">
7578       <div class="title">
7579         <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>
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="date">
7582         16th June 2010
7583       </div>
7584       <div class="body">
7585         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
7586 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
7587 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
7588 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
7589 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
7590 this:
7591
7592 <blockquote><pre>
7593 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7594 tasksel --new-install
7595 </pre></blockquote>
7596
7597 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
7598 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
7599 any output what so ever.
7600
7601 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
7602 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
7603 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
7604 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
7605 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
7606 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
7607 code like this:
7608
7609 <blockquote><pre>
7610 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7611 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
7612 $cmd
7613 </pre></blockquote>
7614
7615 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
7616 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
7617 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
7618 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
7619 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
7620 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
7621 installation.</p>
7622
7623 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
7624 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
7625 like this.</p>
7626
7627       </div>
7628       <div class="tags">
7629
7630
7631         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>.
7632
7633
7634       </div>
7635     </div>
7636     <div class="padding"></div>
7637
7638     <div class="entry">
7639       <div class="title">
7640         <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>
7641       </div>
7642       <div class="date">
7643         13th June 2010
7644       </div>
7645       <div class="body">
7646         <p>My
7647 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
7648 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
7649 finally made the upgrade logs available from
7650 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
7651 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
7652 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
7653 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
7654
7655 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
7656 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
7657 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
7658 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
7659 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
7660 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
7661 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
7662 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
7663
7664 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7665 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7666 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7667 too surprising.</p>
7668
7669 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7670 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
7671 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
7672 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7673 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7674 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
7675 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
7676 continue.</p>
7677
7678 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
7679 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7680   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7681   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7682   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7683   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7684   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7685   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7686   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7687   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7688   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7689   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7690   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7691   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7692   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7693   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7694   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7695   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7696   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7697   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7698   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7699   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7700   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7701   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7702   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7703   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7704   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7705   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7706   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7707   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
7708
7709 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
7710
7711 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7712   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7713   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7714   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7715   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7716   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7717   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7718   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7719   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7720   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7721   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7722   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7723   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7724   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7725   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7726   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
7727   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
7728   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
7729   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
7730   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
7731   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
7732   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
7733   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
7734   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
7735   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7736   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
7737   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
7738   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
7739   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
7740   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7741   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7742   zip</p>
7743
7744 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
7745
7746 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
7747   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
7748   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
7749   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
7750   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
7751   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
7752   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7753   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7754   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7755   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7756   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7757   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7758   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7759   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7760   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7761   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7762   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7763   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7764   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7765   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7766   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7767   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7768   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7769   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7770   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7771   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7772   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7773   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
7774
7775 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
7776 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
7777   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7778   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
7779   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
7780   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7781   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
7782   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
7783   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7784   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
7785   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
7786   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
7787   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
7788   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
7789   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
7790   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
7791   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
7792   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7793   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7794   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7795   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
7796   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7797   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
7798   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
7799   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7800   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7801   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
7802   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
7803   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
7804   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
7805   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
7806   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
7807   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
7808   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
7809   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
7810   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7811   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7812   xulrunner-1.9</p>
7813
7814
7815       </div>
7816       <div class="tags">
7817
7818
7819         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>.
7820
7821
7822       </div>
7823     </div>
7824     <div class="padding"></div>
7825
7826     <div class="entry">
7827       <div class="title">
7828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
7829       </div>
7830       <div class="date">
7831         11th June 2010
7832       </div>
7833       <div class="body">
7834         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
7835 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
7836 have been discovered and reported in the process
7837 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
7838 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
7839 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
7840 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
7841 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
7842
7843 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
7844 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
7845 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
7846 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
7847 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
7848 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
7849
7850 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
7851 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
7852 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7853 is created.  The bug report
7854 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
7855 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
7856 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
7857 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
7858 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
7859 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
7860 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
7861 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
7862 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
7863 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
7864 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
7865 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
7866 Debian Squeeze.</p>
7867
7868 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
7869 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
7870 trick:</p>
7871
7872 <blockquote><pre>
7873 #!/bin/sh
7874 set -ex
7875
7876 if [ "$1" ] ; then
7877     desktop=$1
7878 else
7879     desktop=gnome
7880 fi
7881
7882 from=lenny
7883 to=squeeze
7884
7885 exec &lt; /dev/null
7886 unset LANG
7887 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
7888 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
7889 fuser -mv .
7890 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
7891 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7892 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
7893 #!/bin/sh
7894 exit 101
7895 EOF
7896 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
7897 exit_cleanup() {
7898     umount $tmpdir/proc
7899 }
7900 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
7901 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
7902 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
7903
7904 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
7905
7906 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
7907 # to return the correct answers.
7908 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
7909     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
7910
7911 # Include the desktop and laptop task
7912 for test in desktop laptop ; do
7913     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
7914 #!/bin/sh
7915 exit 2
7916 EOF
7917     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
7918 done
7919
7920 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7921 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
7922 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
7923 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
7924
7925 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
7926 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7927 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7928 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
7929 fuser -mv
7930 </pre></blockquote>
7931
7932 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
7933 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
7934 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
7935 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
7936 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
7937 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
7938
7939 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
7940 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
7941 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
7942 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
7943 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
7944 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
7945 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
7946
7947 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
7948 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
7949 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
7950 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
7951 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
7952 packages.</p>
7953
7954       </div>
7955       <div class="tags">
7956
7957
7958         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>.
7959
7960
7961       </div>
7962     </div>
7963     <div class="padding"></div>
7964
7965     <div class="entry">
7966       <div class="title">
7967         <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>
7968       </div>
7969       <div class="date">
7970          6th June 2010
7971       </div>
7972       <div class="body">
7973         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
7974 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
7975 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
7976 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
7977 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
7978 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
7979 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
7980
7981 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
7982 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
7983 COLUMNS):</p>
7984
7985 <blockquote><pre>
7986 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
7987 previous=N
7988 PREVLEVEL=
7989 RUNLEVEL=
7990 runlevel=S
7991 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
7992 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
7993 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
7994 </pre></blockquote>
7995
7996 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
7997 script.</p>
7998
7999 <blockquote><pre>
8000 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8001 previous=N
8002 PREVLEVEL=N
8003 RUNLEVEL=S
8004 runlevel=S
8005 </pre></blockquote>
8006
8007 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8008 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8009 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8010
8011 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8012 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8013 choice.</p>
8014
8015       </div>
8016       <div class="tags">
8017
8018
8019         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>.
8020
8021
8022       </div>
8023     </div>
8024     <div class="padding"></div>
8025
8026     <div class="entry">
8027       <div class="title">
8028         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8029       </div>
8030       <div class="date">
8031          6th June 2010
8032       </div>
8033       <div class="body">
8034         <p>Via the
8035 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8036 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8037 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8038 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8039 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8040
8041       </div>
8042       <div class="tags">
8043
8044
8045         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>.
8046
8047
8048       </div>
8049     </div>
8050     <div class="padding"></div>
8051
8052     <div class="entry">
8053       <div class="title">
8054         <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>
8055       </div>
8056       <div class="date">
8057          3rd June 2010
8058       </div>
8059       <div class="body">
8060         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
8061 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
8062 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
8063 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
8064 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
8065
8066 <blockquote><pre>
8067 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
8068   vendor                    count
8069   Dell Computer Corporation     1
8070     PowerEdge 1750              1
8071   IBM                           1
8072     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
8073   Intel                         2
8074   [no-dmi-info]                 3
8075 maintainer:~#
8076 </pre></blockquote>
8077
8078 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
8079 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
8080 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
8081 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
8082 option to list the individual machines.</p>
8083
8084 <p>A larger list is
8085 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
8086 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
8087 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
8088 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
8089 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
8090 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
8091 collector.</p>
8092
8093       </div>
8094       <div class="tags">
8095
8096
8097         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>.
8098
8099
8100       </div>
8101     </div>
8102     <div class="padding"></div>
8103
8104     <div class="entry">
8105       <div class="title">
8106         <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>
8107       </div>
8108       <div class="date">
8109          1st June 2010
8110       </div>
8111       <div class="body">
8112         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
8113 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
8114 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
8115 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
8116 wait.</p>
8117
8118 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
8119 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
8120 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
8121 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
8122 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
8123 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
8124
8125 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
8126 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
8127 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
8128 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
8129 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
8130 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
8131 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
8132 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
8133
8134 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
8135
8136       </div>
8137       <div class="tags">
8138
8139
8140         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>.
8141
8142
8143       </div>
8144     </div>
8145     <div class="padding"></div>
8146
8147     <div class="entry">
8148       <div class="title">
8149         <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>
8150       </div>
8151       <div class="date">
8152         27th May 2010
8153       </div>
8154       <div class="body">
8155         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
8156 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
8157 issues are known and should be solved:
8158
8159 <p><ul>
8160
8161 <li>The wicd package seen to
8162 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
8163 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
8164 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
8165 seem to be on the case.</li>
8166
8167 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
8168 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
8169 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
8170 maintainer is on the case.</li>
8171
8172 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
8173 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
8174 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
8175 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
8176 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
8177 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
8178 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
8179 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
8180
8181 </ul></p>
8182
8183 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
8184 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
8185 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
8186 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
8187
8188 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8189 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8190 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8191 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8192
8193 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
8194
8195       </div>
8196       <div class="tags">
8197
8198
8199         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>.
8200
8201
8202       </div>
8203     </div>
8204     <div class="padding"></div>
8205
8206     <div class="entry">
8207       <div class="title">
8208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
8209       </div>
8210       <div class="date">
8211         22nd May 2010
8212       </div>
8213       <div class="body">
8214         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
8215 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
8216 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
8217 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
8218
8219 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
8220 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
8221 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
8222 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
8223 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
8224 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
8225 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
8226 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
8227 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
8228 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
8229 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
8230 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
8231 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
8232 going to work.</p>
8233
8234 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
8235 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
8236 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
8237 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
8238 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
8239 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
8240 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
8241 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
8242 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
8243 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
8244 Edu.</p>
8245
8246 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
8247 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
8248 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
8249 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
8250 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
8251 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
8252
8253 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
8254 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
8255
8256       </div>
8257       <div class="tags">
8258
8259
8260         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>.
8261
8262
8263       </div>
8264     </div>
8265     <div class="padding"></div>
8266
8267     <div class="entry">
8268       <div class="title">
8269         <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>
8270       </div>
8271       <div class="date">
8272         14th May 2010
8273       </div>
8274       <div class="body">
8275         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
8276 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
8277 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
8278 expected, if I am to believe the
8279 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8280 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
8281 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
8282 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
8283 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
8284 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
8285 version.</p>
8286
8287 More information about
8288 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8289 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
8290 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
8291 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8292
8293 <blockquote><pre>
8294 CONCURRENCY=none
8295 </pre></blockquote>
8296
8297 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8298 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8299 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8300 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8301
8302       </div>
8303       <div class="tags">
8304
8305
8306         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>.
8307
8308
8309       </div>
8310     </div>
8311     <div class="padding"></div>
8312
8313     <div class="entry">
8314       <div class="title">
8315         <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>
8316       </div>
8317       <div class="date">
8318         14th May 2010
8319       </div>
8320       <div class="body">
8321         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
8322 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
8323 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
8324 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
8325 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
8326 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
8327 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
8328 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
8329
8330 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
8331 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
8332 this on the collector host:</p>
8333
8334 <blockquote><pre>
8335 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
8336 </pre></blockquote>
8337
8338 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
8339 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
8340
8341 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
8342 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
8343 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
8344 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
8345 written yet.</p>
8346
8347       </div>
8348       <div class="tags">
8349
8350
8351         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>.
8352
8353
8354       </div>
8355     </div>
8356     <div class="padding"></div>
8357
8358     <div class="entry">
8359       <div class="title">
8360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
8361       </div>
8362       <div class="date">
8363         13th May 2010
8364       </div>
8365       <div class="body">
8366         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
8367 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
8368 has been
8369 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
8370
8371 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
8372 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
8373 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
8374 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
8375 based boot system.  Tollef is
8376 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
8377 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
8378 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
8379 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
8380 at the moment do not.</p>
8381
8382 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
8383 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
8384 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
8385 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
8386 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
8387 way forward.</p>
8388
8389 <p>In the mean time, based on the
8390 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8391 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
8392 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
8393 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
8394 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
8395 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
8396 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
8397 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
8398
8399       </div>
8400       <div class="tags">
8401
8402
8403         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>.
8404
8405
8406       </div>
8407     </div>
8408     <div class="padding"></div>
8409
8410     <div class="entry">
8411       <div class="title">
8412         <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>
8413       </div>
8414       <div class="date">
8415          6th May 2010
8416       </div>
8417       <div class="body">
8418         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
8419 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
8420 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
8421 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
8422 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8423 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
8424 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8425
8426 <blockquote><pre>
8427 CONCURRENCY=makefile
8428 </pre></blockquote>
8429
8430 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
8431 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
8432 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
8433 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
8434 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
8435 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
8436 make this happen.</p>
8437
8438 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
8439 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
8440 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
8441 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
8442 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
8443
8444 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
8445 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
8446 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
8447 fix the remaining issues.</p>
8448
8449 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8450 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8451 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8452 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8453
8454       </div>
8455       <div class="tags">
8456
8457
8458         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>.
8459
8460
8461       </div>
8462     </div>
8463     <div class="padding"></div>
8464
8465     <div class="entry">
8466       <div class="title">
8467         <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>
8468       </div>
8469       <div class="date">
8470         27th July 2009
8471       </div>
8472       <div class="body">
8473         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
8474 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
8475 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
8476 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
8477 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
8478 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
8479 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
8480
8481 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
8482 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
8483 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
8484
8485       </div>
8486       <div class="tags">
8487
8488
8489         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>.
8490
8491
8492       </div>
8493     </div>
8494     <div class="padding"></div>
8495
8496     <div class="entry">
8497       <div class="title">
8498         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
8499       </div>
8500       <div class="date">
8501         22nd July 2009
8502       </div>
8503       <div class="body">
8504         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
8505 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
8506 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
8507 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
8508 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
8509 the package up to date.</p>
8510
8511 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
8512 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
8513 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
8514 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
8515 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
8516 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
8517 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
8518 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
8519 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
8520 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
8521 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
8522 working on the future release.</p>
8523
8524 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
8525 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
8526
8527       </div>
8528       <div class="tags">
8529
8530
8531         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>.
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/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
8541       </div>
8542       <div class="date">
8543         24th June 2009
8544       </div>
8545       <div class="body">
8546         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
8547 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
8548 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
8549 funded
8550 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
8551 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
8552 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
8553 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
8554 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
8555 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
8556
8557 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
8558 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
8559 boot:</p>
8560
8561 <ul>
8562
8563 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
8564
8565 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
8566    clock is in UTC.</li>
8567
8568 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
8569    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8570    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
8571
8572 </ul>
8573
8574 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
8575 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
8576 Villegas</a>.
8577
8578 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
8579 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
8580 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
8581 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
8582 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
8583 using this.</p>
8584
8585 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
8586 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
8587 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
8588 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
8589 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
8590 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
8591 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
8592
8593       </div>
8594       <div class="tags">
8595
8596
8597         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>.
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/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
8607       </div>
8608       <div class="date">
8609         17th May 2009
8610       </div>
8611       <div class="body">
8612         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
8613 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
8614 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
8615 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
8616 dager siden kom
8617 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
8618 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
8619 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
8620 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
8621 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
8622
8623 <blockquote>
8624 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
8625 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
8626 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
8627 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
8628 </blockquote>
8629
8630 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
8631 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
8632 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
8633 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
8634 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
8635
8636 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
8637 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
8638 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
8639
8640       </div>
8641       <div class="tags">
8642
8643
8644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
8645
8646
8647       </div>
8648     </div>
8649     <div class="padding"></div>
8650
8651     <div class="entry">
8652       <div class="title">
8653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
8654       </div>
8655       <div class="date">
8656          7th May 2009
8657       </div>
8658       <div class="body">
8659         <p>Kom over
8660 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
8661 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
8662 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
8663 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
8664 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
8665 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
8666 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
8667
8668       </div>
8669       <div class="tags">
8670
8671
8672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8673
8674
8675       </div>
8676     </div>
8677     <div class="padding"></div>
8678
8679     <div class="entry">
8680       <div class="title">
8681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
8682       </div>
8683       <div class="date">
8684          2nd May 2009
8685       </div>
8686       <div class="body">
8687         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
8688 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8689 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8690 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
8691 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8692 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8693 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8694 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8695 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8696 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8697 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8698 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8699 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8700 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8701 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
8702 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8703 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
8704 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8705 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
8706 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
8707
8708 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8709 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8710 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8711 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
8712 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8713 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8714 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8715 betydelige.</p>
8716
8717       </div>
8718       <div class="tags">
8719
8720
8721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8722
8723
8724       </div>
8725     </div>
8726     <div class="padding"></div>
8727
8728     <div class="entry">
8729       <div class="title">
8730         <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>
8731       </div>
8732       <div class="date">
8733          2nd May 2009
8734       </div>
8735       <div class="body">
8736         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
8737 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
8738 do not yet know them.</p>
8739
8740 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
8741 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
8742 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
8743 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
8744 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
8745 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
8746 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
8747 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
8748 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
8749 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
8750 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
8751
8752 <p>The second one is
8753 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
8754 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
8755 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
8756 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
8757 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
8758 and the company behind it is running
8759 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
8760 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
8761 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
8762 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
8763 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
8764 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
8765 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
8766 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
8767
8768 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
8769 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
8770 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
8771 surrounded by today.</p>
8772
8773       </div>
8774       <div class="tags">
8775
8776
8777         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>.
8778
8779
8780       </div>
8781     </div>
8782     <div class="padding"></div>
8783
8784     <div class="entry">
8785       <div class="title">
8786         <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>
8787       </div>
8788       <div class="date">
8789         28th April 2009
8790       </div>
8791       <div class="body">
8792         <p>Julien Blache
8793 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
8794 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
8795 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
8796 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
8797 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
8798 properties.</p>
8799
8800       </div>
8801       <div class="tags">
8802
8803
8804         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>.
8805
8806
8807       </div>
8808     </div>
8809     <div class="padding"></div>
8810
8811     <div class="entry">
8812       <div class="title">
8813         <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>
8814       </div>
8815       <div class="date">
8816         30th March 2009
8817       </div>
8818       <div class="body">
8819         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
8820 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
8821 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
8822 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
8823 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
8824 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
8825 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
8826 application.</p>
8827
8828 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
8829 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
8830 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
8831 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
8832 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
8833 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
8834 blocked from doing so.</p>
8835
8836 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
8837 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
8838 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
8839 requirements change.</p>
8840
8841 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
8842 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
8843 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
8844
8845       </div>
8846       <div class="tags">
8847
8848
8849         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>.
8850
8851
8852       </div>
8853     </div>
8854     <div class="padding"></div>
8855
8856     <div class="entry">
8857       <div class="title">
8858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
8859       </div>
8860       <div class="date">
8861         29th March 2009
8862       </div>
8863       <div class="body">
8864         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
8865 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
8866 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
8867 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
8868 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
8869 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
8870 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
8871 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
8872 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
8873 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
8874 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
8875 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
8876 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
8877 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
8878 now. :)</p>
8879
8880       </div>
8881       <div class="tags">
8882
8883
8884         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8885
8886
8887       </div>
8888     </div>
8889     <div class="padding"></div>
8890
8891     <div class="entry">
8892       <div class="title">
8893         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
8894       </div>
8895       <div class="date">
8896         29th March 2009
8897       </div>
8898       <div class="body">
8899         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
8900 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
8901 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
8902 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
8903 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
8904 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
8905
8906 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
8907 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
8908 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
8909 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
8910 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
8911 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
8912 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
8913 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
8914 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
8915 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
8916 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
8917 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
8918 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
8919
8920 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
8921 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
8922 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
8923 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
8924
8925 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
8926 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
8927
8928 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
8929 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
8930 new IETF work group?</p>
8931
8932       </div>
8933       <div class="tags">
8934
8935
8936         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>.
8937
8938
8939       </div>
8940     </div>
8941     <div class="padding"></div>
8942
8943     <div class="entry">
8944       <div class="title">
8945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
8946       </div>
8947       <div class="date">
8948         15th February 2009
8949       </div>
8950       <div class="body">
8951         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
8952 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
8953 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
8954 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
8955 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
8956 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
8957 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
8958 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
8959 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
8960 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
8961 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
8962 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
8963
8964       </div>
8965       <div class="tags">
8966
8967
8968         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8969
8970
8971       </div>
8972     </div>
8973     <div class="padding"></div>
8974
8975     <div class="entry">
8976       <div class="title">
8977         <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>
8978       </div>
8979       <div class="date">
8980          7th December 2008
8981       </div>
8982       <div class="body">
8983         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
8984 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
8985 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
8986 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
8987 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
8988 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
8989 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
8990 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
8991
8992 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
8993 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
8994 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
8995 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
8996 of these cards.</p>
8997
8998       </div>
8999       <div class="tags">
9000
9001
9002         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>.
9003
9004
9005       </div>
9006     </div>
9007     <div class="padding"></div>
9008
9009     <div class="entry">
9010       <div class="title">
9011         <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>
9012       </div>
9013       <div class="date">
9014         25th November 2008
9015       </div>
9016       <div class="body">
9017         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9018 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9019 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9020 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9021 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9022 notes are available on
9023 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9024 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9025 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9026 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9027 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9028 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9029 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9030 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9031 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9032
9033 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9034 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9035
9036       </div>
9037       <div class="tags">
9038
9039
9040         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>.
9041
9042
9043       </div>
9044     </div>
9045     <div class="padding"></div>
9046
9047     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
9048     <div id="sidebar">
9049
9050
9051
9052 <h2>Archive</h2>
9053 <ul>
9054
9055 <li>2015
9056 <ul>
9057
9058 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9059
9060 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9061
9062 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
9063
9064 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
9065
9066 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9067
9068 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
9069
9070 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (2)</a></li>
9071
9072 </ul></li>
9073
9074 <li>2014
9075 <ul>
9076
9077 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9078
9079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
9080
9081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
9082
9083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9084
9085 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
9086
9087 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9088
9089 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
9090
9091 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9092
9093 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9094
9095 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
9096
9097 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9098
9099 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
9100
9101 </ul></li>
9102
9103 <li>2013
9104 <ul>
9105
9106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
9107
9108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
9109
9110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
9111
9112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
9113
9114 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9115
9116 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
9117
9118 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9119
9120 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9121
9122 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9123
9124 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
9125
9126 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
9127
9128 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9129
9130 </ul></li>
9131
9132 <li>2012
9133 <ul>
9134
9135 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9136
9137 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
9138
9139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
9140
9141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
9142
9143 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
9144
9145 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
9146
9147 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
9148
9149 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9150
9151 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
9152
9153 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
9154
9155 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
9156
9157 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9158
9159 </ul></li>
9160
9161 <li>2011
9162 <ul>
9163
9164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
9165
9166 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9167
9168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
9169
9170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9171
9172 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9173
9174 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9175
9176 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9177
9178 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9179
9180 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
9181
9182 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9183
9184 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9185
9186 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
9187
9188 </ul></li>
9189
9190 <li>2010
9191 <ul>
9192
9193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9194
9195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
9196
9197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
9198
9199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
9200
9201 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9202
9203 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
9204
9205 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
9206
9207 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
9208
9209 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
9210
9211 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9212
9213 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
9214
9215 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
9216
9217 </ul></li>
9218
9219 <li>2009
9220 <ul>
9221
9222 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
9223
9224 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
9225
9226 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
9227
9228 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
9229
9230 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9231
9232 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
9233
9234 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
9235
9236 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9237
9238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
9239
9240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9241
9242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9243
9244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9245
9246 </ul></li>
9247
9248 <li>2008
9249 <ul>
9250
9251 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9252
9253 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9254
9255 </ul></li>
9256
9257 </ul>
9258
9259
9260
9261 <h2>Tags</h2>
9262 <ul>
9263
9264  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
9265
9266  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
9267
9268  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
9269
9270  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
9271
9272  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
9273
9274  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
9275
9276  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
9277
9278  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
9279
9280  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (110)</a></li>
9281
9282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
9283
9284  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
9285
9286  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
9287
9288  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (13)</a></li>
9289
9290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
9291
9292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (281)</a></li>
9293
9294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
9295
9296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
9297
9298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (15)</a></li>
9299
9300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
9301
9302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
9303
9304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (19)</a></li>
9305
9306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
9307
9308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
9309
9310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
9311
9312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
9313
9314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
9315
9316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
9317
9318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
9319
9320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
9321
9322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (35)</a></li>
9323
9324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (263)</a></li>
9325
9326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (176)</a></li>
9327
9328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (18)</a></li>
9329
9330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
9331
9332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (52)</a></li>
9333
9334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
9335
9336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
9337
9338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
9339
9340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
9341
9342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
9343
9344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
9345
9346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
9347
9348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
9349
9350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
9351
9352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
9353
9354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
9355
9356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
9357
9358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (47)</a></li>
9359
9360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
9361
9362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
9363
9364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
9365
9366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
9367
9368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
9369
9370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
9371
9372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (53)</a></li>
9373
9374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
9375
9376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (36)</a></li>
9377
9378 </ul>
9379
9380
9381     </div>
9382     <p style="text-align: right">
9383  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
9384 </p>
9385
9386   </body>
9387 </html>