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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/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         11th December 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
  32
  33 <p>In my early years, I played
  34 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
  35 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
  36 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
  37 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
  38 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
  39 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
  40 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
  41 small.</p>
  42
  43 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
  44 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
  45 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
  46 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
  47 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
  48 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
  49 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
  50 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
  51 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
  52
  53 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
  54 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
  55 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
  56 advantages of the
  57 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
  58 where information about each planet is easily available with common
  59 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
  60 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
  61 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
  62 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
  63 after less then a week.</p>
  64
  65 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
  66 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
  67 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
  68
  69 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  70 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  71 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  72
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="tags">
  75
  76
  77         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
  78
  79
  80       </div>
  81     </div>
  82     <div class="padding"></div>
  83
  84     <div class="entry">
  85       <div class="title">
  86         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
  87       </div>
  88       <div class="date">
  89         25th November 2016
  90       </div>
  91       <div class="body">
  92         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
  93 installation system, observing how using
  94 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
  95 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
  96 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
  97 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
  98 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
  99 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
 100 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
 101 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
 102 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
 103 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
 104 up the process make perfect sense.
 105
 106 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
 107 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
 108 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
 109 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
 110 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
 111 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
 112 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
 113 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
 114 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
 115 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
 116
 117 <blockquote><pre>
 118 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
 119 </pre></blockquote>
 120
 121 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
 122 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
 123 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
 124 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
 125 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
 126 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
 127 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
 128 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
 129 tested its impact.</p>
 130
 131
 132       </div>
 133       <div class="tags">
 134
 135
 136         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>.
 137
 138
 139       </div>
 140     </div>
 141     <div class="padding"></div>
 142
 143     <div class="entry">
 144       <div class="title">
 145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
 146       </div>
 147       <div class="date">
 148         24th November 2016
 149       </div>
 150       <div class="body">
 151         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
 152 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
 153 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
 154 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
 155 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
 156 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
 157 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
 158 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
 159 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
 160 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
 161 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
 162 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
 163 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
 164 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
 165 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
 166 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
 167 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
 168 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
 169 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
 170
 171 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
 172 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
 173 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
 174 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
 175 api.apertium.org.  Se
 176 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
 177 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
 178 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
 179 nynorsk.</p>
 180
 181 <hr/>
 182
 183 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
 184 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
 185 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
 186 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
 187 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
 188 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
 189 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
 190 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
 191 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
 192 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
 193 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
 194 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
 195 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
 196 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
 197 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
 198 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
 199 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
 200 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
 201 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
 202
 203 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
 204 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
 205 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
 206 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
 207 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
 208 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
 209 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
 210 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
 211 nynorsk.</p>
 212
 213       </div>
 214       <div class="tags">
 215
 216
 217         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/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
 218
 219
 220       </div>
 221     </div>
 222     <div class="padding"></div>
 223
 224     <div class="entry">
 225       <div class="title">
 226         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
 227       </div>
 228       <div class="date">
 229         13th November 2016
 230       </div>
 231       <div class="body">
 232         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
 233 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
 234 multi-threaded program, finally
 235 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
 236 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
 237 months since
 238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
 239 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
 240 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
 241 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
 242 JavaScript libraries.</p>
 243
 244 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
 245
 246 <p><blockquote>
 247 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
 248 </blockquote></p>
 249
 250 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
 251 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
 252 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
 253 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
 254 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
 255
 256 <p><blockquote>
 257 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
 258 </blockquote></p>
 259
 260 <p>See the project home page and the
 261 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
 262 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
 263 working.</p>
 264
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="tags">
 267
 268
 269         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>.
 270
 271
 272       </div>
 273     </div>
 274     <div class="padding"></div>
 275
 276     <div class="entry">
 277       <div class="title">
 278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="date">
 281          4th November 2016
 282       </div>
 283       <div class="body">
 284         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
 285 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
 286 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
 287 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
 288 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
 289 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
 290 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
 291 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
 292 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
 293 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
 294 and had
 295 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
 296 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
 297 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
 298 loved ones. :)</p>
 299
 300 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
 301 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
 302 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
 303 building
 304 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
 305 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
 306 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
 307 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
 308 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
 309 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
 310 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
 311 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
 312
 313 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
 314
 315 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
 316 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
 317 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
 318 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
 319 the battery status run low:</p>
 320
 321 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
 322    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
 323 </video></p>
 324
 325 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
 326 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
 327
 328 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
 329 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
 330 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
 331 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
 332 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
 333 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
 334 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
 335 should.</p>
 336
 337       </div>
 338       <div class="tags">
 339
 340
 341         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>.
 342
 343
 344       </div>
 345     </div>
 346     <div class="padding"></div>
 347
 348     <div class="entry">
 349       <div class="title">
 350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
 351       </div>
 352       <div class="date">
 353         10th October 2016
 354       </div>
 355       <div class="body">
 356         <p>In July
 357 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
 358 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
 359 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
 360 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
 361
 362 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
 363 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
 364 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
 365 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
 366 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
 367 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
 368 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
 369 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
 370 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
 371 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
 372 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
 373 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
 374 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
 375 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
 376 time.</p>
 377
 378 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
 379 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
 380 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
 381 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
 382 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
 383 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
 384 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
 385
 386 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
 387 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
 388 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
 389 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
 390 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
 391 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
 392 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
 393 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
 394 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
 395 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
 396
 397 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
 398
 399 <ol>
 400
 401 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
 402 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
 403 know, so you need to install it.
 404
 405 <pre>
 406 apt install git tor chromium
 407 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 408 </pre></li>
 409
 410 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
 411 block below.</li>
 412
 413 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
 414 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
 415
 416 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
 417 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
 418 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
 419 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
 420 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
 421
 422 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
 423 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
 424 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
 425 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
 426 a associated contact database.</li>
 427
 428 </ol>
 429
 430 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
 431 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
 432 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
 433 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
 434 example
 435 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
 436 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
 437 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
 438 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
 439 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
 440 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
 441 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
 442 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
 443 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
 444 working on Debian Stable.</p>
 445
 446 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
 447 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
 448 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
 449
 450 <pre>
 451 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
 452 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
 453 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
 454 --- a/js/background.js
 455 +++ b/js/background.js
 456 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
 457          });
 458      });
 459
 460 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 461 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
 462      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
 463 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 464 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 465      var messageReceiver;
 466      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 467          if (messageReceiver) {
 468 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
 469 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
 470 --- a/js/expire.js
 471 +++ b/js/expire.js
 472 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 473  ;(function() {
 474      'use strict';
 475 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 476 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 477
 478      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 479
 480 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
 481 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
 482 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
 483 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
 484 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
 485              return {
 486                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
 487                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
 488 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
 489 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
 490 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
 491              };
 492          },
 493          clearQR: function() {
 494 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
 495 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
 496 --- a/options.html
 497 +++ b/options.html
 498 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
 499          &lt;div class='nav'>
 500            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
 501            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
 502 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
 503 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
 504 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
 505 +
 506 +         &lt;/div>
 507            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
 508            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
 509            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
 510 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
 511 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
 512 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
 513 +#!/bin/sh
 514 +set -e
 515 +cd $(dirname $0)
 516 +mkdir -p userdata
 517 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
 518 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
 519 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
 520 +fi
 521 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
 522 +exec chromium \
 523 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 524 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 525 EOF
 526 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
 527 </pre>
 528
 529 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 530 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 531 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 532
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="tags">
 535
 536
 537         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 538
 539
 540       </div>
 541     </div>
 542     <div class="padding"></div>
 543
 544     <div class="entry">
 545       <div class="title">
 546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
 547       </div>
 548       <div class="date">
 549          7th October 2016
 550       </div>
 551       <div class="body">
 552         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 553 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 554 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 555 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 556 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 557 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 558 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 559 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 560 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 561 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 562 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 563 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 564 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 565
 566 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 567 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 568 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 569 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 570 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 571 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 572
 573 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 574 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 575 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 576 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 577 identifiers.</p>
 578
 579 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 580 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 581 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 582 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 583 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 584 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 585 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 586 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 587 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 588 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 589 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 590 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 591 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 592 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 593
 594 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 595 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 596 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 597 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 598 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 599 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 600 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 601
 602 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 603 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 604 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 605 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 606 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 607 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 608 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 609 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 610 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 611 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 612 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
 613 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
 614 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
 615 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
 616 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
 617 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
 618 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
 619
 620 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
 621 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
 622 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
 623 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
 624 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
 625 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
 626 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
 627
 628 <p><pre>
 629 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
 630     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
 631 </pre></p>
 632
 633 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
 634 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
 635 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
 636 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
 637 to detect this?</p>
 638
 639 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
 640 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
 641 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
 642 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
 643 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
 644 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
 645 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
 646 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
 647 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
 648 directly if no such class exist.</p>
 649
 650 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 651 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 652 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 653
 654 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
 655 please join us on our IRC channel
 656 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
 657 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
 658 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
 659 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
 660
 661 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 662 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 663 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 664
 665       </div>
 666       <div class="tags">
 667
 668
 669         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>.
 670
 671
 672       </div>
 673     </div>
 674     <div class="padding"></div>
 675
 676     <div class="entry">
 677       <div class="title">
 678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
 679       </div>
 680       <div class="date">
 681         30th August 2016
 682       </div>
 683       <div class="body">
 684         <p>In April we
 685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
 686 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
 687 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
 688 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
 689 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
 690 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
 691 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
 692 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
 693 contributing using
 694 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
 695 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
 696 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
 697 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
 698 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
 699 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
 700 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
 701
 702 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
 703 electronic form.</p>
 704
 705       </div>
 706       <div class="tags">
 707
 708
 709         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>.
 710
 711
 712       </div>
 713     </div>
 714     <div class="padding"></div>
 715
 716     <div class="entry">
 717       <div class="title">
 718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
 719       </div>
 720       <div class="date">
 721         11th August 2016
 722       </div>
 723       <div class="body">
 724         <p>This summer, I read a great article
 725 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
 726 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
 727 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
 728 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
 729 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
 730 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
 731 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
 732 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
 733 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
 734 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
 735 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
 736 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
 737
 738 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
 739 get the system into Debian.  I
 740 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
 741 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
 742 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
 743 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
 744 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
 745 profiling information included in the source package.
 746 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
 747
 748 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
 749 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
 750
 751 <p><blockquote><pre>
 752 coz run --- program-to-run
 753 </pre></blockquote></p>
 754
 755 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
 756 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
 757 most, use a web browser and either point it to
 758 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
 759 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
 760 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
 761 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
 762 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
 763 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
 764 targeted experiments.</p>
 765
 766 <p>A video published by ACM
 767 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
 768 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
 769 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
 770 titled
 771 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
 772 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
 773
 774 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
 775 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
 776 because it uses a
 777 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
 778 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
 779 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
 780 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
 781
 782 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
 783 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
 784 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
 785 C++ libraries.</p>
 786
 787       </div>
 788       <div class="tags">
 789
 790
 791         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 792
 793
 794       </div>
 795     </div>
 796     <div class="padding"></div>
 797
 798     <div class="entry">
 799       <div class="title">
 800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
 801       </div>
 802       <div class="date">
 803          7th July 2016
 804       </div>
 805       <div class="body">
 806         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
 807 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
 808 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
 809 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
 810 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
 811 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
 812 microphone The initial idea had been to just
 813 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
 814 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
 815 until a few days ago.</p>
 816
 817 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
 818 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
 819 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
 820 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
 821 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
 822 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
 823 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
 824
 825 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
 826 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
 827 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
 828 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
 829 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
 830 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
 831 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
 832 him.</p>
 833
 834 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
 835 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
 836 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
 837 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
 838 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
 839 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
 840 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
 841 devices it would work for.</p>
 842
 843 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
 844 followed some instructions
 845 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
 846 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
 847 machine with Debian testing:</p>
 848
 849 <p><pre>
 850 adb reboot-bootloader
 851 fastboot oem rebootRUU
 852 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 853 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
 854 fastboot reboot
 855 </pre></p>
 856
 857 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
 858 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
 859 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
 860 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
 861 too.</p>
 862
 863 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
 864 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
 865 like this:</p>
 866
 867 <p><pre>
 868 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
 869 </pre>
 870
 871 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
 872 this:</p>
 873
 874 <p><pre>
 875 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
 876 </pre></p>
 877
 878 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
 879 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
 880 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
 881 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
 882 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
 883
 884       </div>
 885       <div class="tags">
 886
 887
 888         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 889
 890
 891       </div>
 892     </div>
 893     <div class="padding"></div>
 894
 895     <div class="entry">
 896       <div class="title">
 897         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
 898       </div>
 899       <div class="date">
 900          3rd July 2016
 901       </div>
 902       <div class="body">
 903         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
 904 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
 905 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
 906 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
 907 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
 908 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
 909 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
 910 Github source, compared it to the source in
 911 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
 912 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
 913 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
 914 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
 915 the recipe how I did it.</p>
 916
 917 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
 918
 919 <pre>
 920 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 921 </pre>
 922
 923 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
 924 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
 925
 926 <pre>
 927 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
 928 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
 929 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
 930 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
 931 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
 932          });
 933      });
 934
 935 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 936 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 937 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
 938 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 939      var messageReceiver;
 940      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 941          if (messageReceiver) {
 942 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
 943 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
 944 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
 945 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 946  ;(function() {
 947      'use strict';
 948 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 949 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
 950
 951      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 952
 953 EOF
 954 </pre>
 955
 956 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
 957 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
 958 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
 959 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
 960
 961 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
 962 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
 963
 964 <pre>
 965 #!/bin/sh
 966 cd $(dirname $0)
 967 mkdir -p userdata
 968 exec chromium \
 969   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 970   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 971 </pre>
 972
 973 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
 974 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
 975 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
 976 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
 977 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
 978
 979 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
 980 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
 981 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
 982 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
 983 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
 984 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
 985 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
 986 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
 987 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
 988 Signal from my laptop.
 989
 990 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
 991 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
 992 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
 993 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
 994 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
 995 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
 996 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
 997 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
 998 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
 999 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
1000 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
1001 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
1002
1003       </div>
1004       <div class="tags">
1005
1006
1007         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1008
1009
1010       </div>
1011     </div>
1012     <div class="padding"></div>
1013
1014     <div class="entry">
1015       <div class="title">
1016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1017       </div>
1018       <div class="date">
1019          6th June 2016
1020       </div>
1021       <div class="body">
1022         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
1023 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
1024 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
1025 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
1026 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
1027 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
1028 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
1029 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
1030 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
1031
1032 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
1033 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
1034 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
1035 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
1036 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
1037 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
1038 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
1039
1040 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
1041 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
1042 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
1043 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
1044 toten and parole.</p>
1045
1046 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
1047 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
1048 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
1049 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
1050 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
1051 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
1052 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
1053 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
1054 formats.</p>
1055
1056       </div>
1057       <div class="tags">
1058
1059
1060         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>.
1061
1062
1063       </div>
1064     </div>
1065     <div class="padding"></div>
1066
1067     <div class="entry">
1068       <div class="title">
1069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="date">
1072          5th June 2016
1073       </div>
1074       <div class="body">
1075         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
1076 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
1077 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
1078 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
1079 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
1080 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
1081 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
1082 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
1083 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
1084 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
1085 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
1086 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
1087 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
1088 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
1089 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
1090 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
1091 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
1092 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
1093 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
1094 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
1095
1096 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
1097 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
1098 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
1099 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
1100 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
1101 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
1102 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
1103 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
1104 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
1105 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
1106 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
1107 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
1108 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
1109 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
1110
1111 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
1112 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
1113 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
1114 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
1115 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
1116 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
1117 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
1118 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
1119
1120 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1121 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
1122 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1123 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
1124 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1125 information is collected from
1126 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1127 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
1128 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1129 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
1130 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1131 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
1132 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1133 type (preferably
1134 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1135 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1136 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1137 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
1138
1139 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
1140 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1141 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
1142
1143 <p><blockquote><pre>
1144 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1145 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
1146   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
1147     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
1148     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
1149     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
1150   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
1151 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
1152 </pre></blockquote></p>
1153
1154 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1155 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
1156 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1157 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
1158
1159 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1160 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1161 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
1162
1163 <p><blockquote><pre>
1164 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1165 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1166 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1167 %
1168 </pre></blockquote></p>
1169
1170 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1171 MimeType= line.</p>
1172
1173 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1174 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1175 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1176 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1177 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1178 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
1179 fixed. :)</p>
1180
1181       </div>
1182       <div class="tags">
1183
1184
1185         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>.
1186
1187
1188       </div>
1189     </div>
1190     <div class="padding"></div>
1191
1192     <div class="entry">
1193       <div class="title">
1194         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
1195       </div>
1196       <div class="date">
1197         25th May 2016
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="body">
1200         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1201 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1202 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1203 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1204 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
1205 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1206 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1207 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1208 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1209 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
1210 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1211 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
1212
1213 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1214 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
1215 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1216 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
1217 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
1218 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1219 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
1220 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1221 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
1222 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1223 and see if it is recognised.</p>
1224
1225 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1226 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1227 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
1228
1229 <p><blockquote><pre>
1230 % isenkram-lookup
1231 bluez
1232 cheese
1233 fprintd
1234 fprintd-demo
1235 gkrellm-thinkbat
1236 hdapsd
1237 libpam-fprintd
1238 pidgin-blinklight
1239 thinkfan
1240 tleds
1241 tp-smapi-dkms
1242 tp-smapi-source
1243 tpb
1244 %p
1245 </pre></blockquote></p>
1246
1247 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
1248 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1249 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1250 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
1251 See
1252 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1253 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
1254
1255       </div>
1256       <div class="tags">
1257
1258
1259         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>.
1260
1261
1262       </div>
1263     </div>
1264     <div class="padding"></div>
1265
1266     <div class="entry">
1267       <div class="title">
1268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
1269       </div>
1270       <div class="date">
1271         23rd May 2016
1272       </div>
1273       <div class="body">
1274         <p>Yesterday I updated the
1275 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1276 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1277 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
1278 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
1279 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1280 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1281 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1282 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1283 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1284 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
1285
1286 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1287 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
1288 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
1289 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1290 capacity.</p>
1291
1292 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
1293
1294 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
1295 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
1296 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
1297 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
1298
1299 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
1300
1301 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
1302 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
1303 shrinking. :(</p>
1304
1305 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
1306 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
1307 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
1308 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
1309 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
1310 machine.</p>
1311
1312 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1313 check out the
1314 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1315 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1316 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
1317 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1318 Patches are very welcome.</p>
1319
1320 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1321 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1322 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1323
1324       </div>
1325       <div class="tags">
1326
1327
1328         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>.
1329
1330
1331       </div>
1332     </div>
1333     <div class="padding"></div>
1334
1335     <div class="entry">
1336       <div class="title">
1337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
1338       </div>
1339       <div class="date">
1340         12th May 2016
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="body">
1343         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
1344 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
1345 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
1346 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
1347 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
1348 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1349 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
1350 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
1351 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
1352 great if you could help out with
1353 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
1354 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
1355
1356       </div>
1357       <div class="tags">
1358
1359
1360         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>.
1361
1362
1363       </div>
1364     </div>
1365     <div class="padding"></div>
1366
1367     <div class="entry">
1368       <div class="title">
1369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1370       </div>
1371       <div class="date">
1372          8th May 2016
1373       </div>
1374       <div class="body">
1375         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
1376 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
1377
1378 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
1379 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
1380 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
1381 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
1382 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
1383 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
1384 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
1385 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
1386 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
1387 players.</p>
1388
1389 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
1390 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
1391 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
1392 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
1393 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
1394 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
1395 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
1396 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
1397 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
1398 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
1399 support most file formats.</p>
1400
1401 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
1402 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
1403 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
1404 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
1405 listed first in the table.</p>
1406
1407 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
1408 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
1409 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
1410 support?</p>
1411
1412       </div>
1413       <div class="tags">
1414
1415
1416         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>.
1417
1418
1419       </div>
1420     </div>
1421     <div class="padding"></div>
1422
1423     <div class="entry">
1424       <div class="title">
1425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
1426       </div>
1427       <div class="date">
1428          4th May 2016
1429       </div>
1430       <div class="body">
1431         A friend of mine made me aware of
1432 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
1433 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
1434 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
1435
1436 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
1437 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
1438 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
1439 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
1440 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
1441 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
1442 production started.</p>
1443
1444 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
1445 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
1446 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
1447
1448       </div>
1449       <div class="tags">
1450
1451
1452         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>.
1453
1454
1455       </div>
1456     </div>
1457     <div class="padding"></div>
1458
1459     <div class="entry">
1460       <div class="title">
1461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
1462       </div>
1463       <div class="date">
1464         10th April 2016
1465       </div>
1466       <div class="body">
1467         <p>During this weekends
1468 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
1469 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
1470 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
1471 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
1472 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
1473 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
1474 contributing using
1475 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1476 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1477 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1478 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1479 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1480 contributors</a>.</p>
1481
1482 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
1483 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
1484 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
1485 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
1486 available for many more languages.</p>
1487
1488       </div>
1489       <div class="tags">
1490
1491
1492         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>.
1493
1494
1495       </div>
1496     </div>
1497     <div class="padding"></div>
1498
1499     <div class="entry">
1500       <div class="title">
1501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
1502       </div>
1503       <div class="date">
1504          7th April 2016
1505       </div>
1506       <div class="body">
1507         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
1508 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
1509 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
1510 But I might be wrong.</p>
1511
1512 <p>According to
1513 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
1514 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
1515 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
1516 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
1517 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
1518 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
1519 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
1520 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
1521 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
1522 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
1523
1524 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
1525 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
1526 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
1527 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
1528 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
1529 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
1530 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
1531 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1532 team status page</a>, and
1533 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
1534 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
1535
1536 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
1537 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
1538 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
1539 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
1540 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
1541 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
1542 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
1543 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
1544 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
1545 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
1546 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
1547 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
1548
1549       </div>
1550       <div class="tags">
1551
1552
1553         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>.
1554
1555
1556       </div>
1557     </div>
1558     <div class="padding"></div>
1559
1560     <div class="entry">
1561       <div class="title">
1562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
1563       </div>
1564       <div class="date">
1565         23rd March 2016
1566       </div>
1567       <div class="body">
1568         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
1569 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
1570 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
1571 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
1572 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
1573 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
1574 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
1575 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
1576
1577 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
1578 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
1579 and lifetime prediction by running:
1580
1581 <p><pre>
1582 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
1583 </pre></p>
1584
1585 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
1586
1587 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
1588 entry yet):</p>
1589
1590 <p><pre>
1591 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
1592 </pre></p>
1593
1594 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
1595 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
1596 few years of data.</p>
1597
1598 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
1599 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
1600 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
1601 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
1602 know.  The issue is reported as
1603 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
1604 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
1605 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
1606 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
1607 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
1608
1609 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1610 check out the
1611 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1612 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1613 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
1614 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1615 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
1616
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="tags">
1619
1620
1621         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>.
1622
1623
1624       </div>
1625     </div>
1626     <div class="padding"></div>
1627
1628     <div class="entry">
1629       <div class="title">
1630         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="date">
1633         15th March 2016
1634       </div>
1635       <div class="body">
1636         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
1637 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
1638 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
1639 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
1640 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
1641 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
1642 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
1643 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
1644 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
1645 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
1646 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
1647
1648 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
1649 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
1650 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
1651 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
1652 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
1653 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
1654 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
1655 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
1656 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
1657 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
1658 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
1659
1660 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
1661
1662 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
1663 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
1664 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
1665 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
1666 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
1667 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
1668
1669 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
1670 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
1671 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
1672 and graphing.</p>
1673
1674 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
1675 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
1676 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
1677 on
1678 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1679 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
1680
1681       </div>
1682       <div class="tags">
1683
1684
1685         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>.
1686
1687
1688       </div>
1689     </div>
1690     <div class="padding"></div>
1691
1692     <div class="entry">
1693       <div class="title">
1694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
1695       </div>
1696       <div class="date">
1697         19th February 2016
1698       </div>
1699       <div class="body">
1700         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
1701 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
1702 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
1703 the code in the package in question, preferably in
1704 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
1705 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
1706
1707 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
1708 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
1709 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
1710 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
1711 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
1712 out what was wrong with
1713 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
1714 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
1715 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
1716 semi-automatically.</p>
1717
1718 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
1719 file based on the code in the source package,
1720 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
1721 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
1722 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
1723 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
1724 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
1725 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
1726 option in
1727 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
1728 blog posts from 2014</a>.
1729
1730 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
1731
1732 <p><pre>
1733 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
1734 </pre></p>
1735
1736 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
1737 this might not be the best option.</p>
1738
1739 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
1740 this approach in
1741 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
1742 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
1743 dpkg-copyright' option:
1744
1745 <p><pre>
1746 cme update dpkg-copyright
1747 </pre></p>
1748
1749 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
1750 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
1751
1752 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
1753 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
1754 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
1755 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
1756 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
1757 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
1758 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
1759 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
1760 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
1761 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
1762
1763 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
1764 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
1765 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
1766 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
1767
1768 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
1769 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
1770 planet.debian.org.</p>
1771
1772 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1773 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1774 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1775
1776 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
1777 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
1778
1779 <p><pre>
1780 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
1781   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
1782 </pre></p>
1783
1784 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
1785 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
1786 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
1787 with my packages in the future.</p>
1788
1789 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
1790 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
1791 command line.</p>
1792
1793       </div>
1794       <div class="tags">
1795
1796
1797         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>.
1798
1799
1800       </div>
1801     </div>
1802     <div class="padding"></div>
1803
1804     <div class="entry">
1805       <div class="title">
1806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
1807       </div>
1808       <div class="date">
1809          4th February 2016
1810       </div>
1811       <div class="body">
1812         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
1813 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
1814 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
1815 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
1816 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
1817 about. :)</p>
1818
1819 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
1820 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
1821 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
1822 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
1823 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
1824 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
1825
1826 <blockquote><pre>
1827 % apt install appstream
1828 [...]
1829 % apt update
1830 [...]
1831 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
1832   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
1833 firmware-qlogic
1834 %
1835 </pre></blockquote>
1836
1837 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
1838 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
1839 a way appstream can use.</p>
1840
1841 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
1842 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
1843 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
1844 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
1845 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
1846 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
1847
1848 <blockquote><pre>
1849 % apt install appstream
1850 [...]
1851 % apt update
1852 [...]
1853 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
1854   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
1855 bkchem
1856 phototonic
1857 inkscape
1858 shutter
1859 tetzle
1860 geeqie
1861 xia
1862 pinta
1863 gthumb
1864 karbon
1865 comix
1866 mirage
1867 viewnior
1868 postr
1869 ristretto
1870 kolourpaint4
1871 eog
1872 eom
1873 gimagereader
1874 midori
1875 %
1876 </pre></blockquote>
1877
1878 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
1879 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
1880
1881       </div>
1882       <div class="tags">
1883
1884
1885         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>.
1886
1887
1888       </div>
1889     </div>
1890     <div class="padding"></div>
1891
1892     <div class="entry">
1893       <div class="title">
1894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
1895       </div>
1896       <div class="date">
1897         24th January 2016
1898       </div>
1899       <div class="body">
1900         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
1901 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
1902 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
1903 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
1904 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
1905 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
1906 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
1907 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
1908 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
1909 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
1910 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
1911 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
1912 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
1913 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
1914 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
1915 entities.</p>
1916
1917 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
1918
1919 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
1920 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
1921 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
1922 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
1923 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
1924 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
1925 tool to do so is called
1926 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
1927 discovered it when I read
1928 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
1929 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
1930 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
1931 The python program was in Debian, but
1932 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
1933 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
1934 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
1935 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
1936 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
1937 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
1938 are now included
1939 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
1940
1941 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
1942 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
1943 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
1944 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
1945 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
1946 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
1947 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
1948 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
1949 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
1950 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
1951 about yourself with the services.</p>
1952
1953 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
1954 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
1955 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
1956 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
1957 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
1958 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
1959 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
1960 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
1961 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
1962 things.  A similar technique have been
1963 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
1964 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
1965 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
1966 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
1967 public.</p>
1968
1969 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
1970 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
1971 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
1972 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
1973
1974 <p>(I have uploaded
1975 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
1976 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
1977 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
1978
1979       </div>
1980       <div class="tags">
1981
1982
1983         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1984
1985
1986       </div>
1987     </div>
1988     <div class="padding"></div>
1989
1990     <div class="entry">
1991       <div class="title">
1992         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
1993       </div>
1994       <div class="date">
1995         15th January 2016
1996       </div>
1997       <div class="body">
1998         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
1999 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
2000 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
2001 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
2002 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
2003 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
2004 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
2005 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
2006 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
2007 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
2008 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
2009 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
2010 was not the first to propose this, as the
2011 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
2012 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
2013 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
2014 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
2015
2016 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
2017 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
2018 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
2019 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
2020 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
2021
2022 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
2023 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
2024 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
2025 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
2026 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
2027 done in /etc/.</p>
2028
2029 <blockquote><pre>
2030 apt install apt-transport-tor
2031 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2032 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
2033 </pre></blockquote>
2034
2035 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
2036 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
2037 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
2038 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
2039
2040 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
2041 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
2042 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
2043 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
2044 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
2045 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
2046
2047 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
2048 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
2049 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
2050 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
2051 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
2052
2053 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
2054 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
2055 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
2056 system.</p>
2057
2058       </div>
2059       <div class="tags">
2060
2061
2062         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>.
2063
2064
2065       </div>
2066     </div>
2067     <div class="padding"></div>
2068
2069     <div class="entry">
2070       <div class="title">
2071         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
2072       </div>
2073       <div class="date">
2074         23rd December 2015
2075       </div>
2076       <div class="body">
2077         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
2078 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
2079 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
2080 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
2081 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
2082 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
2083
2084 <p>A few days I came across
2085 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
2086 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
2087 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
2088 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
2089 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
2090 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
2091 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
2092 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
2093 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
2094 discovered the developer
2095 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
2096 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
2097 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
2098 archive.</p>
2099
2100 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
2101 it into Debian, where it currently
2102 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
2103 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
2104
2105 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
2106 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
2107 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
2108 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
2109 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
2110 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
2111 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
2112 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
2113 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
2114 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
2115 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
2116 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
2117
2118 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
2119 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
2120 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
2121 package show up in unstable.</p>
2122
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="tags">
2125
2126
2127         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2128
2129
2130       </div>
2131     </div>
2132     <div class="padding"></div>
2133
2134     <div class="entry">
2135       <div class="title">
2136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
2137       </div>
2138       <div class="date">
2139         20th December 2015
2140       </div>
2141       <div class="body">
2142         <p>Around three years ago, I created
2143 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
2144 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
2145 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
2146 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
2147 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
2148 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
2149 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
2150 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
2151 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
2152 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
2153 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
2154 with.</p>
2155
2156 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
2157 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
2158 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
2159 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
2160 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
2161 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
2162 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2163 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
2164 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
2165 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
2166 Debian version of appstream.</p>
2167
2168 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
2169 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
2170 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
2171 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
2172 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
2173 how do add the required
2174 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
2175 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
2176 this content:</p>
2177
2178 <blockquote><pre>
2179 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2180 &lt;component&gt;
2181   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
2182   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
2183   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
2184   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
2185   &lt;description&gt;
2186     &lt;p&gt;
2187       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
2188       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
2189       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
2190       launcher.
2191     &lt;/p&gt;
2192   &lt;/description&gt;
2193   &lt;provides&gt;
2194     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
2195   &lt;/provides&gt;
2196 &lt;/component&gt;
2197 </pre></blockquote>
2198
2199 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
2200 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
2201 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
2202 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
2203 0202.</p>
2204
2205 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
2206 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
2207 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
2208 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
2209 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
2210 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
2211 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
2212 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
2213
2214 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
2215 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
2216 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
2217 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
2218 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
2219
2220 <blockquote><pre>
2221 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
2222 </pre></blockquote>
2223
2224 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
2225 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
2226 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
2227 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
2228 question.</p>
2229
2230 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
2231 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
2232
2233 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
2234 try running this command on the command line:</p>
2235
2236 <blockquote><pre>
2237 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
2238 </pre></blockquote>
2239
2240 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2242 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2243
2244       </div>
2245       <div class="tags">
2246
2247
2248         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>.
2249
2250
2251       </div>
2252     </div>
2253     <div class="padding"></div>
2254
2255     <div class="entry">
2256       <div class="title">
2257         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
2258       </div>
2259       <div class="date">
2260         30th November 2015
2261       </div>
2262       <div class="body">
2263         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
2264 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
2265 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
2266 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
2267 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
2268
2269 <blockquote>
2270
2271 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
2272
2273 <blockquote>
2274 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
2275
2276 The first step is to choose a
2277 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
2278 code.<br/>
2279
2280 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
2281 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
2282
2283 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
2284 work<br/>
2285
2286 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
2287 </blockquote>
2288
2289 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
2290 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
2291 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
2292 0x57</a></small></p>
2293
2294 <p>As the Debian Website
2295 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
2296 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
2297 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
2298 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
2299 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
2300 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
2301 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
2302 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
2303 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
2304 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
2305 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
2306 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
2307 Freedom">FaiF</a>
2308 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
2309 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
2310 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
2311 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
2312 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
2313 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
2314 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
2315 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
2316 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
2317 In March the SFC supported a
2318 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
2319 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
2320 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
2321 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
2322 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
2323 conferences
2324 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
2325 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
2326 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
2327 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
2328 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
2329 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
2330 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
2331 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
2332 Software.</p>
2333
2334 <p>If you support Free Software,
2335 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
2336 what the SFC do, agree with their
2337 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
2338 principles</a>, are happy about their
2339 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
2340 work on a project that is an SFC
2341 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
2342 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
2343 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
2344 Allan Webber</a>,
2345 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
2346 Smith</a>,
2347 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
2348 Bacon</a>, myself and
2349 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
2350 becoming a
2351 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
2352 next week your donation will be
2353 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
2354 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
2355 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
2356 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
2357 social media accounts.</p>
2358
2359 </blockquote>
2360
2361 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
2362 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
2363 supporter too?</p>
2364
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="tags">
2367
2368
2369         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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2370
2371
2372       </div>
2373     </div>
2374     <div class="padding"></div>
2375
2376     <div class="entry">
2377       <div class="title">
2378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
2379       </div>
2380       <div class="date">
2381         17th November 2015
2382       </div>
2383       <div class="body">
2384         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
2385 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
2386 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
2387 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
2388 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
2389 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
2390 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
2391 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
2392 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
2393 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
2394
2395 <pre>
2396 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
2397       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
2398 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
2399 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
2400 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2401 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2402 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
2403 </pre>
2404
2405 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
2406 my old key.</p>
2407
2408 <p>If you signed my old key
2409 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
2410 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
2411 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
2412 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
2413
2414       </div>
2415       <div class="tags">
2416
2417
2418         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>.
2419
2420
2421       </div>
2422     </div>
2423     <div class="padding"></div>
2424
2425     <div class="entry">
2426       <div class="title">
2427         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
2428       </div>
2429       <div class="date">
2430         24th September 2015
2431       </div>
2432       <div class="body">
2433         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
2434 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
2435 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
2436 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
2437 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
2438 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
2439 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
2440
2441 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
2442
2443 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
2444 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
2445 by someone else.  I found
2446 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
2447 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
2448 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
2449 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
2450 from him.  Via
2451 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
2452 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
2453 discovered
2454 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
2455 available in Debian.</p>
2456
2457 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
2458 battery stats ever since. Now my
2459 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
2460 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
2461 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
2462 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
2463
2464 <pre>
2465 #!/bin/sh
2466 # Inspired by
2467 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
2468 # See also
2469 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
2470 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
2471
2472 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
2473     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
2474
2475 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
2476     (
2477         printf "timestamp,"
2478         for f in $files; do
2479             printf "%s," $f
2480         done
2481         echo
2482     ) > "$logfile"
2483 fi
2484
2485 log_battery() {
2486     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
2487     # when several log processes run in parallel.
2488     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
2489         for f in $files; do \
2490             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
2491         done)
2492     echo "$msg"
2493 }
2494
2495 cd /sys/class/power_supply
2496
2497 for bat in BAT*; do
2498     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
2499 done
2500 </pre>
2501
2502 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
2503 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
2504 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
2505 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
2506 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
2507 The code for the Debian package
2508 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
2509 available on github</a>.</p>
2510
2511 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
2512
2513 <pre>
2514 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
2515 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
2516 [...]
2517 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2518 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
2519 </pre>
2520
2521 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
2522 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
2523 battery.</p>
2524
2525 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
2526 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
2527 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
2528 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
2529 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
2530 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
2531 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
2532 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
2533 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
2534 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
2535 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
2536 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
2537 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
2538 Linux too.</p>
2539
2540 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
2541 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
2542 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
2543 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
2544 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
2545 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
2546 load).</p>
2547
2548 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
2549 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
2550 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
2551 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
2552 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
2553 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
2554 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
2555 those.</p>
2556
2557 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
2558 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
2559 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
2560 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
2561 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
2562 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
2563 specific.</p>
2564
2565       </div>
2566       <div class="tags">
2567
2568
2569         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>.
2570
2571
2572       </div>
2573     </div>
2574     <div class="padding"></div>
2575
2576     <div class="entry">
2577       <div class="title">
2578         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
2579       </div>
2580       <div class="date">
2581          5th July 2015
2582       </div>
2583       <div class="body">
2584         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
2585 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
2586 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
2587 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
2588 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
2589 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
2590 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
2591 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
2592 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
2593 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
2594 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
2595
2596 <p>One tip I got was to use the
2597 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
2598 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
2599 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
2600 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
2601 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
2602 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
2603
2604 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
2605 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
2606 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
2607 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
2608 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
2609 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
2610 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
2611 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
2612 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
2613 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
2614 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
2615 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
2616 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
2617 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
2618 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
2619
2620 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
2621 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
2622 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
2623 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
2624
2625 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
2626 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
2627
2628 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
2629 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
2630 different
2631 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
2632 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
2633
2634       </div>
2635       <div class="tags">
2636
2637
2638         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>.
2639
2640
2641       </div>
2642     </div>
2643     <div class="padding"></div>
2644
2645     <div class="entry">
2646       <div class="title">
2647         <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>
2648       </div>
2649       <div class="date">
2650          3rd July 2015
2651       </div>
2652       <div class="body">
2653         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
2654 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
2655 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
2656 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
2657 flickering.</p>
2658
2659 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
2660 still as
2661 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
2662 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
2663 good help from
2664 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
2665 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
2666 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
2667 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
2668 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
2669 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
2670 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
2671 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
2672 deteriorated since X41.</p>
2673
2674 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
2675 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
2676 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
2677 have suggestions.</p>
2678
2679 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
2680 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
2681 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
2682
2683       </div>
2684       <div class="tags">
2685
2686
2687         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>.
2688
2689
2690       </div>
2691     </div>
2692     <div class="padding"></div>
2693
2694     <div class="entry">
2695       <div class="title">
2696         <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>
2697       </div>
2698       <div class="date">
2699         22nd November 2014
2700       </div>
2701       <div class="body">
2702         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2703 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2704 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2705 courtesy of
2706 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2707 Schubert</a> and
2708 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2709 McVittie</a>.
2710
2711 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2712 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2713 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2714 you upgrade:</p>
2715
2716 <p><blockquote><pre>
2717 Package: systemd-sysv
2718 Pin: release o=Debian
2719 Pin-Priority: -1
2720 </pre></blockquote><p>
2721
2722 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2723 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2724 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2725 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2726 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2727
2728 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2729 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2730 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2731 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2732 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2733 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2734
2735 <p><blockquote><pre>
2736 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2737 </pre></blockquote><p>
2738
2739 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2740
2741 <p><blockquote><pre>
2742 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2743 </pre></blockquote><p>
2744
2745 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2746 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2747
2748 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2749 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2750 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2751 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2752 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2753 Jessie is released.</p>
2754
2755 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2756 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2757 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2758 line.</p>
2759
2760       </div>
2761       <div class="tags">
2762
2763
2764         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>.
2765
2766
2767       </div>
2768     </div>
2769     <div class="padding"></div>
2770
2771     <div class="entry">
2772       <div class="title">
2773         <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>
2774       </div>
2775       <div class="date">
2776         10th November 2014
2777       </div>
2778       <div class="body">
2779         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2780 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2781 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2782
2783 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2784 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2785 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2786 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2787 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2788 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2789 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2790 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2791 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2792 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2793 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2794 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2795 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2796 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2797 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2798
2799 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2800 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2801 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2802 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2803 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2804 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2805 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2806 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2807 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2808 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2809 were fairly easy, and
2810 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2811 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2812 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2813 useful approach.</p>
2814
2815 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2816 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2817 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2818 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2819 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2820 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2821 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2822 this:</p>
2823
2824 <p><blockquote><pre>
2825 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2826   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2827 </pre></blockquote></p>
2828
2829 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2830 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2831
2832 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2833 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2834 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2835 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2836 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2837 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2838 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2839 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2840 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2841 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2842 system.</p>
2843
2844 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2845 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2846 SMTorP. :)</p>
2847
2848       </div>
2849       <div class="tags">
2850
2851
2852         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>.
2853
2854
2855       </div>
2856     </div>
2857     <div class="padding"></div>
2858
2859     <div class="entry">
2860       <div class="title">
2861         <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>
2862       </div>
2863       <div class="date">
2864         22nd October 2014
2865       </div>
2866       <div class="body">
2867         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2868 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2869 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2870 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2871 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2872 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2873 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2874 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2875 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2876 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2877 lists I recently took over:</p>
2878
2879 <p><blockquote><pre>
2880 % time listadmin xiph
2881 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2882 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2883
2884 real    0m1.709s
2885 user    0m0.232s
2886 sys     0m0.012s
2887 %
2888 </pre></blockquote></p>
2889
2890 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2891 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2892 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2893 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2894 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2895 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2896 program.</p>
2897
2898 <p>If you install
2899 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2900 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2901 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2902
2903 <p><blockquote><pre>
2904 username username@example.org
2905 spamlevel 23
2906 default discard
2907 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2908
2909 password secret
2910 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2911 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2912
2913 password hidden
2914 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2915 </pre></blockquote></p>
2916
2917 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2918 learn the details.</p>
2919
2920 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2921 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2922 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2923 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2924
2925 <p><blockquote><pre>
2926 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2927 </pre></blockquote></p>
2928
2929 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2930 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2931 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2932 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2933 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2934 email.</p>
2935
2936 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2937 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2938 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2939 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2940 software.</p>
2941
2942 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2943 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2944 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2945
2946 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2947 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2948 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2949 sure why.</p>
2950
2951       </div>
2952       <div class="tags">
2953
2954
2955         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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2956
2957
2958       </div>
2959     </div>
2960     <div class="padding"></div>
2961
2962     <div class="entry">
2963       <div class="title">
2964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2965       </div>
2966       <div class="date">
2967         17th October 2014
2968       </div>
2969       <div class="body">
2970         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2971 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2972 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2973 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2974 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2975 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2976 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2977
2978 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2979 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2980 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2981 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2982 of this story.)</p>
2983
2984 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2985 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2986 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2987 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2988 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2989 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2990 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2991 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2992 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2993 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2994
2995 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2996 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2997 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2998 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2999
3000 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
3001 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
3002
3003 <p><blockquote><pre>
3004 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
3005 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
3006 </pre></blockquote></p>
3007
3008 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
3009 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
3010 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
3011 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
3012 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
3013 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
3014 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
3015 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
3016
3017 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
3018 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
3019
3020 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
3021 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
3022 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
3023 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
3024 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
3025
3026 <p><blockquote><pre>
3027 Task: isenkram-packages
3028 Section: hardware
3029 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3030  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3031  proposed.
3032 Test-new-install: show show
3033 Relevance: 8
3034 Packages: for-current-hardware
3035
3036 Task: isenkram-firmware
3037 Section: hardware
3038 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3039  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
3040  packages are proposed.
3041 Test-new-install: mark show
3042 Relevance: 8
3043 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
3044 </pre></blockquote></p>
3045
3046 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
3047 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
3048 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
3049 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
3050 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
3051
3052 <p><blockquote><pre>
3053 #!/bin/sh
3054 #
3055 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
3056 export PATH
3057 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3058 </pre></blockquote></p>
3059
3060 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
3061 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
3062
3063 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
3064 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
3065 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
3066 install.</p>
3067
3068 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
3069 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
3070 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
3071
3072       </div>
3073       <div class="tags">
3074
3075
3076         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>.
3077
3078
3079       </div>
3080     </div>
3081     <div class="padding"></div>
3082
3083     <div class="entry">
3084       <div class="title">
3085         <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>
3086       </div>
3087       <div class="date">
3088          4th October 2014
3089       </div>
3090       <div class="body">
3091         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
3092 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
3093 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
3094 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
3095
3096 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
3097
3098 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
3099 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
3100 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
3101
3102       </div>
3103       <div class="tags">
3104
3105
3106         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>.
3107
3108
3109       </div>
3110     </div>
3111     <div class="padding"></div>
3112
3113     <div class="entry">
3114       <div class="title">
3115         <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>
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="date">
3118          4th October 2014
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="body">
3121         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
3122 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3123 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3124 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3125 Dibb.</p>
3126
3127 <p>I just wrapped up
3128 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3129 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
3130 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3131 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
3132 0.17.</p>
3133
3134 <ul>
3135
3136  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
3137  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3138    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
3139  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
3140  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
3141  <li>Fix include orders</li>
3142  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
3143  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
3144  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3145    the palette size is the same.</li>
3146  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
3147  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
3148  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
3149  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3150    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
3151
3152 </ul>
3153
3154 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3155 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3156 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
3157
3158       </div>
3159       <div class="tags">
3160
3161
3162         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
3163
3164
3165       </div>
3166     </div>
3167     <div class="padding"></div>
3168
3169     <div class="entry">
3170       <div class="title">
3171         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3172       </div>
3173       <div class="date">
3174         26th September 2014
3175       </div>
3176       <div class="body">
3177         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3178 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3179 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3180 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3181 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3182 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3183 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3184 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3185 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3186 future.  The
3187 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3188 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3189 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3190 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
3191 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
3192
3193 <p>First, download the test ISO via
3194 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
3195 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
3196 or rsync (use
3197 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
3198 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
3199 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
3200 install with some tweaking.</p>
3201
3202 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
3203 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
3204
3205 <p><blockquote><pre>
3206 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
3207 </pre></blockquote></p>
3208
3209 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
3210 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
3211 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
3212 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
3213
3214 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
3215 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
3216 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
3217 your need.</p>
3218
3219 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
3220 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
3221 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
3222 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
3223 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
3224 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
3225 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
3226 days.</p>
3227
3228 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
3229 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
3230 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
3231 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
3232 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
3233 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
3234 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
3235 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
3236 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
3237
3238 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
3239 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
3240 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
3241
3242       </div>
3243       <div class="tags">
3244
3245
3246         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>.
3247
3248
3249       </div>
3250     </div>
3251     <div class="padding"></div>
3252
3253     <div class="entry">
3254       <div class="title">
3255         <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>
3256       </div>
3257       <div class="date">
3258         25th September 2014
3259       </div>
3260       <div class="body">
3261         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
3262 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
3263 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
3264 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
3265 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
3266 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
3267 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
3268 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
3269 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
3270 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
3271 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
3272 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
3273 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
3274
3275 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
3276 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
3277 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
3278 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
3279 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
3280 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
3281 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
3282 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
3283 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
3284 list</a>. :)</p>
3285
3286       </div>
3287       <div class="tags">
3288
3289
3290         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>.
3291
3292
3293       </div>
3294     </div>
3295     <div class="padding"></div>
3296
3297     <div class="entry">
3298       <div class="title">
3299         <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>
3300       </div>
3301       <div class="date">
3302         16th September 2014
3303       </div>
3304       <div class="body">
3305         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
3306 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
3307 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
3308 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
3309 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
3310 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
3311 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
3312 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
3313 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
3314 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
3315 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
3316 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
3317 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
3318 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
3319
3320 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
3321 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
3322 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
3323 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
3324 depend on the small and clever package
3325 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
3326 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
3327 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
3328 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
3329 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
3330 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
3331 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
3332 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
3333 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
3334 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
3335 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
3336
3337 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
3338 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
3339 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
3340 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
3341 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
3342 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
3343 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
3344 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
3345 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
3346 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
3347 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
3348 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
3349 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
3350 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
3351 dialog.</p>
3352
3353 <p><table>
3354
3355 <tr>
3356 <th>Machine/setup</th>
3357 <th>Original tasksel</th>
3358 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
3359 <th>Reduction</th>
3360 </tr>
3361
3362 <tr>
3363 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
3364 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
3365 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
3366 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
3367 </tr>
3368
3369 <tr>
3370 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3371 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3372 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3373 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3374 </tr>
3375
3376 <tr>
3377 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3378 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3379 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3380 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3381 </tr>
3382
3383 <tr>
3384 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3385 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3386 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3387 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3388 </tr>
3389
3390 <tr>
3391 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3392 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3393 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3394 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3395 </tr>
3396
3397 </table></p>
3398
3399 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3400 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3401 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3402 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3403 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3404 installed.</p>
3405
3406 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3407 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3408 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3409 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3410 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3411 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3412 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3413 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3414 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3415 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3416 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3417 for the entire installation.</p>
3418
3419 <p>I've implemented this in the
3420 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3421 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3422 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3423 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3424 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3425
3426 <p><blockquote><pre>
3427 #!/bin/sh
3428 set -e
3429 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3430 info() {
3431     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3432 }
3433 error() {
3434     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3435 }
3436 override_install() {
3437     apt-install eatmydata || true
3438     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3439         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3440             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3441             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3442             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3443                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3444                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3445                     > /target$file.edu
3446                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3447                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3448                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3449                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3450             else
3451                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3452             fi
3453         done
3454     else
3455         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3456     fi
3457 }
3458
3459 override_install
3460 </pre></blockquote></p>
3461
3462 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3463 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3464
3465 <p><blockquote><pre>
3466 #! /bin/sh -e
3467 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3468 error() {
3469     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3470 }
3471 remove_install_override() {
3472     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3473         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3474         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3475             rm /target$file
3476             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3477                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3478             rm /target$file.edu
3479         else
3480             error "Missing divert for $file."
3481         fi
3482     done
3483     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3484 }
3485
3486 remove_install_override
3487 </pre></blockquote></p>
3488
3489 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3490 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3491 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3492
3493 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3494 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3495 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3496 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3497 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3498 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3499 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3500 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3501 everyone.</p>
3502
3503 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3504 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3505 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3506 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3507
3508 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3509 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3510 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3511 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3512 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3513
3514 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3515 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3516 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3517 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3518 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3519
3520       </div>
3521       <div class="tags">
3522
3523
3524         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>.
3525
3526
3527       </div>
3528     </div>
3529     <div class="padding"></div>
3530
3531     <div class="entry">
3532       <div class="title">
3533         <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>
3534       </div>
3535       <div class="date">
3536         10th September 2014
3537       </div>
3538       <div class="body">
3539         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3540 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3541 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3542 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3543 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3544 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3545 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3546 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3547 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3548 those problems are gone now.</p>
3549
3550 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3551 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3552 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3553 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3554 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3555
3556 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3557 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3558 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3559
3560 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3561 line:</p>
3562
3563 <p><blockquote><pre>
3564 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3565 </pre></blockquote></p>
3566
3567 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3568 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3569 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3570 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3571
3572 <p><blockquote><pre>
3573 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3574 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3575 %
3576 </pre></blockquote></p>
3577
3578 <p>Now if only
3579 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3580 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3581 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3582 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3583 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3584 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3585 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3586 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3587 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3588
3589       </div>
3590       <div class="tags">
3591
3592
3593         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>.
3594
3595
3596       </div>
3597     </div>
3598     <div class="padding"></div>
3599
3600     <div class="entry">
3601       <div class="title">
3602         <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>
3603       </div>
3604       <div class="date">
3605         17th June 2014
3606       </div>
3607       <div class="body">
3608         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3609 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3610 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3611 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3612 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3613
3614 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3615 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3616 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3617 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3618 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3619 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3620 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3621 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3622 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3623 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3624 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3625 goals.</p>
3626
3627 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3628 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3629 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3630 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3631 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3632 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3633 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3634 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3635 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3636 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3637 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3638 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3639 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3640 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3641 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3642 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3643 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3644 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3645 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3646 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3647 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3648 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3649 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3650 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3651
3652 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3653 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3654 track the English original.  For this we use the
3655 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3656 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3657 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3658 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3659 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3660 files), which the translations update with the native language
3661 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3662 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3663 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3664 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3665 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3666 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3667 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3668 of the documentation.</p>
3669
3670 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3671 recommend using
3672 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3673 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3674 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3675 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3676 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3677 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3678 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3679 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3680
3681 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3682 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3683 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3684 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3685 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3686 translated images by storing translated versions in
3687 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3688 package maintainers know more.</p>
3689
3690 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3691 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3692 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3693 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3694 PDF version</a> or the
3695 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3696 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3697 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3698
3699 <p>To learn more, check out
3700 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3701 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3702 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3703 manual on the wiki</a> and
3704 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3705 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3706
3707       </div>
3708       <div class="tags">
3709
3710
3711         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>.
3712
3713
3714       </div>
3715     </div>
3716     <div class="padding"></div>
3717
3718     <div class="entry">
3719       <div class="title">
3720         <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>
3721       </div>
3722       <div class="date">
3723         23rd April 2014
3724       </div>
3725       <div class="body">
3726         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3727 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3728 So I implemented one, using
3729 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3730 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3731 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3732 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3733 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3734 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3735
3736 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3737 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3738 packages to install.  The first part is in
3739 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3740 this:</p>
3741
3742 <p><blockquote><pre>
3743 Task: isenkram
3744 Section: hardware
3745 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3746  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3747  proposed.
3748 Test-new-install: mark show
3749 Relevance: 8
3750 Packages: for-current-hardware
3751 </pre></blockquote></p>
3752
3753 <p>The second part is in
3754 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3755 this:</p>
3756
3757 <p><blockquote><pre>
3758 #!/bin/sh
3759 #
3760 (
3761     isenkram-lookup
3762     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3763 ) | sort -u
3764 </pre></blockquote></p>
3765
3766 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3767 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3768 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3769 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3770 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3771 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3772
3773 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3774 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3775 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3776 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3777 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3779 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3780 the python-apt code (bug
3781 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3782 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3783 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3784 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3785 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3786 unstable today.</p>
3787
3788 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3789 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3790 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3791 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3792 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3793 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3794 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3795 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3796 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3797
3798 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3799 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3800 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3801 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3802 package.  See also
3803 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3804 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3805 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3806 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3807
3808       </div>
3809       <div class="tags">
3810
3811
3812         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>.
3813
3814
3815       </div>
3816     </div>
3817     <div class="padding"></div>
3818
3819     <div class="entry">
3820       <div class="title">
3821         <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>
3822       </div>
3823       <div class="date">
3824         15th April 2014
3825       </div>
3826       <div class="body">
3827         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3828 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3829 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3830 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3831 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3832 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3833
3834 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3835 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3836 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3837 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3838 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3839 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3840 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3841
3842 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3843 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3844 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3845 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3846 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3847 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3848 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3849 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3850 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3851 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3852 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3853 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3854
3855 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3856 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3857 become root:</p>
3858
3859 <p><pre>
3860 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3861   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3862   u-boot-tools
3863 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3864   freedom-maker
3865 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3866 </pre></p>
3867
3868 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3869 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3870 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3871 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3872 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3873 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3874 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3875 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3876
3877 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3878 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3879 the preseed values:</p>
3880
3881 <p><pre>
3882 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3883 </pre></p>
3884
3885 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3886 it still work.</p>
3887
3888 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3889 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3890 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3891 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3892 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3893 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3894 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3895
3896 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3897 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3898 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3899 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3900 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3901 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3902
3903       </div>
3904       <div class="tags">
3905
3906
3907         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>.
3908
3909
3910       </div>
3911     </div>
3912     <div class="padding"></div>
3913
3914     <div class="entry">
3915       <div class="title">
3916         <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>
3917       </div>
3918       <div class="date">
3919          9th April 2014
3920       </div>
3921       <div class="body">
3922         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3923 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3924 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3925 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3926 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3927 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3928 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3929 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3930 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3931 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3932 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3933 have looked at a system called
3934 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3935 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3936
3937 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3938 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3939 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3940 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3941 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3942 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3943 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3944 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3945 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3946 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3947 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3948 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3949 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3950
3951 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3952 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3953 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3954 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3955 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3956 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3957 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3958 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3959 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3960 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3961 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3962 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3963 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3964 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3965 account.</p>
3966
3967 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3968 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3969 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3970 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
3971 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
3972 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
3973 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
3974
3975 <p><blockquote><pre>
3976 [s3c]
3977 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3978 backend-login: API-login
3979 backend-password: API-password
3980 fs-passphrase: local-password
3981 </pre></blockquote></p>
3982
3983 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
3984 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
3985 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
3986 details and password to create it:</p>
3987
3988 <p><blockquote><pre>
3989 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
3990 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
3991   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
3992 Enter backend login:
3993 Enter backend password:
3994 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
3995 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
3996 Enter encryption password:
3997 Confirm encryption password:
3998 Generating random encryption key...
3999 Creating metadata tables...
4000 Dumping metadata...
4001 ..objects..
4002 ..blocks..
4003 ..inodes..
4004 ..inode_blocks..
4005 ..symlink_targets..
4006 ..names..
4007 ..contents..
4008 ..ext_attributes..
4009 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4010 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4011 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4012
4013 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4014
4015 <p><blockquote><pre>
4016 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4017   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4018 Using 4 upload threads.
4019 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4020 Reading metadata...
4021 ..objects..
4022 ..blocks..
4023 ..inodes..
4024 ..inode_blocks..
4025 ..symlink_targets..
4026 ..names..
4027 ..contents..
4028 ..ext_attributes..
4029 Mounting filesystem...
4030 # df -h /s3ql
4031 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4032 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4033 #
4034 </pre></blockquote></p>
4035
4036 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4037 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4038 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4039 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4040 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4041 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4042
4043 <p><blockquote><pre>
4044 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4045 #
4046 </pre></blockquote></p>
4047
4048 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4049 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4050 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4051 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4052 file system:</p>
4053
4054 <p><blockquote><pre>
4055 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4056 Using cached metadata.
4057 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4058 Checking DB integrity...
4059 Creating temporary extra indices...
4060 Checking lost+found...
4061 Checking cached objects...
4062 Checking names (refcounts)...
4063 Checking contents (names)...
4064 Checking contents (inodes)...
4065 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4066 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4067 Checking objects (backend)...
4068 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4069 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4070 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4071 Checking objects (sizes)...
4072 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4073 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4074 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4075 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4076 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4077 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4078 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4079 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4080 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4081 Checking directory reachability...
4082 Checking unix conventions...
4083 Checking referential integrity...
4084 Dropping temporary indices...
4085 Backing up old metadata...
4086 Dumping metadata...
4087 ..objects..
4088 ..blocks..
4089 ..inodes..
4090 ..inode_blocks..
4091 ..symlink_targets..
4092 ..names..
4093 ..contents..
4094 ..ext_attributes..
4095 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4096 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4097 #
4098 </pre></blockquote></p>
4099
4100 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4101 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4102 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4103 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4104 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4105 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4106 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4107 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4108 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4109 working set.</p>
4110
4111 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4112 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4113 busy:</p>
4114
4115 <p><blockquote><pre>
4116 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4117   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4118 Using 8 upload threads.
4119 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4120 #
4121 </pre></blockquote></p>
4122
4123 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4124 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4125 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4126 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4127 s3qlctrl:
4128
4129 <p><blockquote><pre>
4130 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4131 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4132 #
4133 </pre></blockquote></p>
4134
4135 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4136 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4137 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4138 a report:</p>
4139
4140 <p><blockquote><pre>
4141 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4142 Directory entries:    9141
4143 Inodes:               9143
4144 Data blocks:          8851
4145 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4146 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4147 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4148 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4149 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4150 #
4151 </pre></blockquote></p>
4152
4153 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4154 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4155 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4156 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4157 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4158 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4159 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4160 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4161 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4162 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4163 best.</p>
4164
4165 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4166 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4167 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4168 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4169 poster is titled
4170 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4171 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4172 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4173 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4174 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4175
4176 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4177 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4178 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4179 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4180 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4181 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4182 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4183 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4184
4185 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4186 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4187 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4188 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4189 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4190 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4191 only read from it.</p>
4192
4193 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4194 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4195 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4196
4197       </div>
4198       <div class="tags">
4199
4200
4201         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/nice free software">nice free software</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>.
4202
4203
4204       </div>
4205     </div>
4206     <div class="padding"></div>
4207
4208     <div class="entry">
4209       <div class="title">
4210         <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>
4211       </div>
4212       <div class="date">
4213         14th March 2014
4214       </div>
4215       <div class="body">
4216         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4217 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4218 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4219 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4220 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4221 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4222 release (0.2).</p>
4223
4224 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4225 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4226 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4227 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4228 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4229 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4230 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4231 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4232 and build using
4233 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4234 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4235
4236 <pre>
4237 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4238   freedom-maker
4239 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4240   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4241   u-boot-tools
4242 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4243 </pre>
4244
4245 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4246 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4247 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4248 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4249 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4250 kpartx call.</p>
4251
4252 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4253 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4254 the preseed values:</p>
4255
4256 <pre>
4257 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4258 </pre>
4259
4260 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4261 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4262 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4263 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4264 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4265 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4266
4267 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4268 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4269 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4270 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4271 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4272 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4273
4274       </div>
4275       <div class="tags">
4276
4277
4278         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>.
4279
4280
4281       </div>
4282     </div>
4283     <div class="padding"></div>
4284
4285     <div class="entry">
4286       <div class="title">
4287         <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>
4288       </div>
4289       <div class="date">
4290         22nd February 2014
4291       </div>
4292       <div class="body">
4293         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4294 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4295 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4296 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4297 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4298 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4299 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4300 proper home since then.</p>
4301
4302 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4303 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4304 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4305 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4306 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4307
4308 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4309 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4310 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4311 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4312 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4313 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4314 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4315 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4316 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4317
4318       </div>
4319       <div class="tags">
4320
4321
4322         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>.
4323
4324
4325       </div>
4326     </div>
4327     <div class="padding"></div>
4328
4329     <div class="entry">
4330       <div class="title">
4331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4332       </div>
4333       <div class="date">
4334          3rd February 2014
4335       </div>
4336       <div class="body">
4337         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4338 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4339 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4340 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4341 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4342 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4343 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4344 <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>,
4345 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4346
4347 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4348 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4349 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4350 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4351 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4352 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4353
4354 <p><blockquote><pre>
4355 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4356 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4357 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4358 dhclient /dev/eth0
4359 </pre></blockquote></p>
4360
4361 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4362 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4363 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4364
4365 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4366 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4367 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4368 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4369 side.</p>
4370
4371 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4372 stuff:</p>
4373
4374 <p><blockquote><pre>
4375 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4376 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4377 EOF
4378 apt-get update
4379 apt-get dist-upgrade
4380 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4381     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4382 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4383 </pre></blockquote></p>
4384
4385 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4386 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4387 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4388 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4389 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4390 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4391 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4392 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4393 ssh instead.
4394
4395 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4396 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4397 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4398 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4399 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4400 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4401
4402 <p><blockquote><pre>
4403 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4404 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4405 EOF
4406 </pre></blockquote></p>
4407
4408 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4409 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4410 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4411 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4412
4413 <p><blockquote><pre>
4414 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4415 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4416 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4417 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4418 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4419 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4420 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4421 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4422 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4423 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4424 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4425 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4426 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4427 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4428 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4429 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4430 #
4431 </pre></blockquote></p>
4432
4433 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4434 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4435 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4436 command line stuff.<p>
4437
4438       </div>
4439       <div class="tags">
4440
4441
4442         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>.
4443
4444
4445       </div>
4446     </div>
4447     <div class="padding"></div>
4448
4449     <div class="entry">
4450       <div class="title">
4451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
4452       </div>
4453       <div class="date">
4454         14th January 2014
4455       </div>
4456       <div class="body">
4457         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
4458 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
4459 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
4460 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
4461 the source.  The company behind it provide
4462 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
4463 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
4464 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
4465 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
4466 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
4467 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
4468 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
4469 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
4470 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
4471 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
4472 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
4473 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
4474 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
4475 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
4476 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
4477 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
4478 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
4479 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
4480 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
4481
4482 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
4483
4484 <ul>
4485
4486   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
4487   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
4488   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
4489
4490 </ul>
4491
4492 <p>You can
4493 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4494 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4495 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4496 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4497 include a test suite check.</p>
4498
4499       </div>
4500       <div class="tags">
4501
4502
4503         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>.
4504
4505
4506       </div>
4507     </div>
4508     <div class="padding"></div>
4509
4510     <div class="entry">
4511       <div class="title">
4512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
4513       </div>
4514       <div class="date">
4515         24th November 2013
4516       </div>
4517       <div class="body">
4518         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
4519 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
4520 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
4521 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
4522 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
4523 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
4524 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
4525 is working on.  I checked the
4526 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
4527 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
4528 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
4529 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
4530 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
4531 These are the release notes:</p>
4532
4533 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
4534
4535 <ul>
4536
4537   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
4538    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
4539    up.</li>
4540
4541   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
4542
4543   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
4544    Matthias Klose.</li>
4545
4546   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
4547    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
4548
4549   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
4550    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
4551    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
4552
4553 </ul>
4554
4555 <p>You can
4556 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
4557 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
4558 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
4559 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
4560 include a testsuite check.</p>
4561
4562       </div>
4563       <div class="tags">
4564
4565
4566         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>.
4567
4568
4569       </div>
4570     </div>
4571     <div class="padding"></div>
4572
4573     <div class="entry">
4574       <div class="title">
4575         <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>
4576       </div>
4577       <div class="date">
4578          2nd November 2013
4579       </div>
4580       <div class="body">
4581         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
4582 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
4583 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
4584 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
4585 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
4586
4587 <p><pre>
4588 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
4589 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
4590 # Provides:          rsyslog
4591 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
4592 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
4593 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
4594 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
4595 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
4596 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
4597 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
4598 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
4599 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
4600 ### END INIT INFO
4601 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
4602 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
4603 </pre></p>
4604
4605 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
4606 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
4607 info/comments.</p>
4608
4609 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
4610 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
4611
4612 <p><pre>
4613 #!/bin/sh
4614
4615 # Define LSB log_* functions.
4616 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
4617 # and status_of_proc is working.
4618 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
4619
4620 #
4621 # Function that starts the daemon/service
4622
4623 #
4624 do_start()
4625 {
4626         # Return
4627         #   0 if daemon has been started
4628         #   1 if daemon was already running
4629         #   2 if daemon could not be started
4630         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
4631                 || return 1
4632         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
4633                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
4634                 || return 2
4635         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
4636         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
4637         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
4638 }
4639
4640 #
4641 # Function that stops the daemon/service
4642 #
4643 do_stop()
4644 {
4645         # Return
4646         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
4647         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
4648         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
4649         #   other if a failure occurred
4650         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4651         RETVAL="$?"
4652         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
4653         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
4654         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
4655         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
4656         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
4657         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
4658         # sleep for some time.
4659         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
4660         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
4661         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
4662         rm -f $PIDFILE
4663         return "$RETVAL"
4664 }
4665
4666 #
4667 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
4668 #
4669 do_reload() {
4670         #
4671         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
4672         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
4673         # then implement that here.
4674         #
4675         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
4676         return 0
4677 }
4678
4679 SCRIPTNAME=$1
4680 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
4681 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
4682 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
4683     script="$1"
4684     shift
4685     . $script
4686 else
4687     exit 0
4688 fi
4689
4690 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
4691 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
4692
4693 # Exit if the package is not installed
4694 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
4695
4696 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
4697 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
4698
4699 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
4700 . /lib/init/vars.sh
4701
4702 case "$1" in
4703   start)
4704         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
4705         do_start
4706         case "$?" in
4707                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4708                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4709         esac
4710         ;;
4711   stop)
4712         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
4713         do_stop
4714         case "$?" in
4715                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
4716                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
4717         esac
4718         ;;
4719   status)
4720         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
4721         ;;
4722   #reload|force-reload)
4723         #
4724         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
4725         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
4726         #
4727         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
4728         #do_reload
4729         #log_end_msg $?
4730         #;;
4731   restart|force-reload)
4732         #
4733         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
4734         # 'force-reload' alias
4735         #
4736         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
4737         do_stop
4738         case "$?" in
4739           0|1)
4740                 do_start
4741                 case "$?" in
4742                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
4743                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
4744                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
4745                 esac
4746                 ;;
4747           *)
4748                 # Failed to stop
4749                 log_end_msg 1
4750                 ;;
4751         esac
4752         ;;
4753   *)
4754         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
4755         exit 3
4756         ;;
4757 esac
4758
4759 :
4760 </pre></p>
4761
4762 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
4763 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
4764 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
4765 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
4766
4767 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
4768 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
4769 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
4770 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
4771 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
4772
4773       </div>
4774       <div class="tags">
4775
4776
4777         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>.
4778
4779
4780       </div>
4781     </div>
4782     <div class="padding"></div>
4783
4784     <div class="entry">
4785       <div class="title">
4786         <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>
4787       </div>
4788       <div class="date">
4789          1st November 2013
4790       </div>
4791       <div class="body">
4792         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
4793 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
4794 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
4795 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
4796 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
4797 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
4798 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
4799 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
4800 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
4801 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
4802 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
4803 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
4804
4805 <p>The source is now available from
4806 <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>
4807
4808       </div>
4809       <div class="tags">
4810
4811
4812         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>.
4813
4814
4815       </div>
4816     </div>
4817     <div class="padding"></div>
4818
4819     <div class="entry">
4820       <div class="title">
4821         <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>
4822       </div>
4823       <div class="date">
4824         27th October 2013
4825       </div>
4826       <div class="body">
4827         <p>The
4828 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
4829 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
4830 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
4831 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
4832 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
4833 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
4834 of a plan to simplify the build system for
4835 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
4836 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
4837 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
4838 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
4839 Raspberry Pi.</p>
4840
4841 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
4842 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
4843 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
4844 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
4845 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
4846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
4847 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
4848 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
4849 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
4850 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
4851 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
4852 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
4853 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
4854 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
4855 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
4856 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
4857 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
4858 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
4859 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
4860 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
4861 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
4862 available from
4863 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
4864 upstream project page</a>.</p>
4865
4866 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
4867 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
4868 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
4869 list:</p>
4870
4871 <p><pre>
4872 #!/bin/sh
4873 set -e # Exit on first error
4874 rootdir="$1"
4875 cd "$rootdir"
4876 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
4877 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
4878 EOF
4879 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
4880 # install a kernel somewhere too.
4881 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
4882     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4883 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
4884 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
4885 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
4886 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
4887 </pre></p>
4888
4889 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
4890 to build the image:</p>
4891
4892 <pre>
4893 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
4894     --variant minbase \
4895     --arch armel \
4896     --distribution jessie \
4897     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
4898     --image test.img \
4899     --size 600M \
4900     --bootsize 64M \
4901     --boottype vfat \
4902     --log-level debug \
4903     --verbose \
4904     --no-kernel \
4905     --no-extlinux \
4906     --root-password raspberry \
4907     --hostname raspberrypi \
4908     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
4909     --customize `pwd`/customize \
4910     --package netbase \
4911     --package git-core \
4912     --package binutils \
4913     --package ca-certificates \
4914     --package wget \
4915     --package kmod
4916 </pre></p>
4917
4918 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
4919 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
4920 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
4921 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
4922 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
4923 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
4924 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
4925
4926 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
4927 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
4928 build dependency list.</p>
4929
4930 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
4931 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
4932 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
4933 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
4934
4935       </div>
4936       <div class="tags">
4937
4938
4939         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>.
4940
4941
4942       </div>
4943     </div>
4944     <div class="padding"></div>
4945
4946     <div class="entry">
4947       <div class="title">
4948         <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>
4949       </div>
4950       <div class="date">
4951         15th October 2013
4952       </div>
4953       <div class="body">
4954         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4955 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4956 these. :)</p>
4957
4958 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4959 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4960 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4961 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
4962 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4963 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
4964 hope you will to. :)</p>
4965
4966 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4967 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4968 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
4969 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
4970 donated.  Are you next?</p>
4971
4972 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4973 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4974 statement under the heading
4975 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4976 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4977 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
4978 too.</p>
4979
4980       </div>
4981       <div class="tags">
4982
4983
4984         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>.
4985
4986
4987       </div>
4988     </div>
4989     <div class="padding"></div>
4990
4991     <div class="entry">
4992       <div class="title">
4993         <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>
4994       </div>
4995       <div class="date">
4996         27th September 2013
4997       </div>
4998       <div class="body">
4999         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
5000 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
5001 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
5002 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
5003
5004 <ul>
5005
5006 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
5007 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
5008
5009 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
5010 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5011
5012 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
5013 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
5014 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
5015 (Youtube)</li>
5016
5017 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
5018 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
5019
5020 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
5021 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
5022
5023 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
5024 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
5025 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
5026
5027 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
5028 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
5029 (Youtube)</li>
5030
5031 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
5032 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
5033
5034 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
5035 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
5036
5037 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
5038 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
5039 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
5040
5041 </ul>
5042
5043 <p>A larger list is available from
5044 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
5045 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
5046
5047 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
5048 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
5049 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
5050 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
5051 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
5052 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
5053 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
5054 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
5055 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
5056 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5057 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5058
5059       </div>
5060       <div class="tags">
5061
5062
5063         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>.
5064
5065
5066       </div>
5067     </div>
5068     <div class="padding"></div>
5069
5070     <div class="entry">
5071       <div class="title">
5072         <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>
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="date">
5075         10th September 2013
5076       </div>
5077       <div class="body">
5078         <p>I was introduced to the
5079 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
5080 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
5081 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
5082 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
5083 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
5084 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
5085 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
5086 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
5087
5088 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
5089 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
5090 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
5091 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
5092 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
5093
5094 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
5095 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
5096 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
5097 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
5098 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
5099 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
5100 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
5101 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
5102 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
5103 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
5104 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
5105 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
5106 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
5107 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
5108 missing in Debian).</p>
5109
5110 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
5111 scripts
5112 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
5113 and a administrative web interface
5114 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
5115 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
5116 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
5117 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
5118 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
5119 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
5120 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
5121 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
5122 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
5123 this is really working yet, see
5124 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
5125 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
5126 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
5127 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
5128 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
5129 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
5130 with lots of half baked features.</p>
5131
5132 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
5133 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
5134 at.</p>
5135
5136 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
5137
5138 <ol>
5139
5140 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
5141 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
5142 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
5143 to the Debian installer:<p>
5144 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
5145
5146 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
5147 install on.</li>
5148
5149 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
5150 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
5151
5152 </ol>
5153
5154 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
5155
5156 <ol>
5157
5158 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
5159 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
5160 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
5161 <pre>
5162 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
5163 </pre></li>
5164 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
5165 <pre>
5166 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
5167    apt-key add -
5168 apt-get update
5169 apt-get install freedombox-setup
5170 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
5171 </pre></li>
5172 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
5173
5174 </ol>
5175
5176 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
5177 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
5178 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
5179 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
5180 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
5181
5182 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
5183 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
5184 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
5185 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
5186
5187 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
5188 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
5189 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
5190 irc.debian.org and the
5191 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
5192 mailing list</a>.</p>
5193
5194 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
5195 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
5196 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
5197 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
5198 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
5199 default password is 'secret'.</p>
5200
5201       </div>
5202       <div class="tags">
5203
5204
5205         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>.
5206
5207
5208       </div>
5209     </div>
5210     <div class="padding"></div>
5211
5212     <div class="entry">
5213       <div class="title">
5214         <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>
5215       </div>
5216       <div class="date">
5217         18th August 2013
5218       </div>
5219       <div class="body">
5220         <p>Earlier, I reported about
5221 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
5222 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
5223 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
5224 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
5225 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
5226 currently on the disk.</p>
5227
5228 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
5229 <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>
5230 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
5231 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
5232 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
5233 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
5234 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
5235 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
5236 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
5237 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
5238 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
5239 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
5240 the broken disks.</p>
5241
5242       </div>
5243       <div class="tags">
5244
5245
5246         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>.
5247
5248
5249       </div>
5250     </div>
5251     <div class="padding"></div>
5252
5253     <div class="entry">
5254       <div class="title">
5255         <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>
5256       </div>
5257       <div class="date">
5258         17th July 2013
5259       </div>
5260       <div class="body">
5261         <p>Today I switched to
5262 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5263 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
5264 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5265 <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
5266 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
5267 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5268 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5269 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
5270 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
5271 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5272 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5273 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5274 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5275 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5276 station from now on.</p>
5277
5278 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5279 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5280 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
5281 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5282 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5283 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
5284 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5285 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5286 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5287 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5288 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5289 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
5290
5291 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5292 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
5293 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5294 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5295 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
5296 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
5297 parameters are tuned:</p>
5298
5299 <ul>
5300
5301 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5302     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
5303
5304 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5305     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5306     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
5307
5308 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5309     systems.</li>
5310
5311 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5312     /etc/fstab.</li>
5313
5314 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
5315
5316 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5317     cron.daily).</li>
5318
5319 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5320     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
5321
5322 </ul>
5323
5324 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5325 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5326 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5327 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5328 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5329 from getting the data on the disk (see
5330 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
5331 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5332 right thing to do.</p>
5333
5334 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5335 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5336 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
5337
5338 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5339 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5340 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5341 instead of during my work.</p>
5342
5343 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5344 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
5345
5346 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
5347 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5348 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
5349
5350 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5351 there.</p>
5352
5353 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5354 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5355 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5356 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5357 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5358 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5359 back.</p>
5360
5361       </div>
5362       <div class="tags">
5363
5364
5365         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>.
5366
5367
5368       </div>
5369     </div>
5370     <div class="padding"></div>
5371
5372     <div class="entry">
5373       <div class="title">
5374         <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>
5375       </div>
5376       <div class="date">
5377         10th July 2013
5378       </div>
5379       <div class="body">
5380         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5381 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5382 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
5383 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5384 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
5385 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
5386 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
5387 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
5388
5389 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5390 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
5391 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
5392 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5393 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5394 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
5395 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
5396 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
5397 lock up when I download a new
5398 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
5399 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5400 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
5401
5402 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5403 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5404 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5405 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5406 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5407 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5408
5409 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
5410 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
5411 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
5412 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5413 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
5414 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
5415
5416 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5417 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
5418 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5419 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5420 exist).</p>
5421
5422       </div>
5423       <div class="tags">
5424
5425
5426         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>.
5427
5428
5429       </div>
5430     </div>
5431     <div class="padding"></div>
5432
5433     <div class="entry">
5434       <div class="title">
5435         <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>
5436       </div>
5437       <div class="date">
5438          9th July 2013
5439       </div>
5440       <div class="body">
5441         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
5442 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5443 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
5444 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
5445 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5446 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5447 Bitraf</a>.</p>
5448
5449 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
5450 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
5451 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
5452 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5453 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
5454
5455       </div>
5456       <div class="tags">
5457
5458
5459         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>.
5460
5461
5462       </div>
5463     </div>
5464     <div class="padding"></div>
5465
5466     <div class="entry">
5467       <div class="title">
5468         <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>
5469       </div>
5470       <div class="date">
5471          5th July 2013
5472       </div>
5473       <div class="body">
5474         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5475 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5476 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
5477 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5478 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
5479 ended up picking a
5480 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
5481 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5482 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
5483 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
5484 on that below.</p>
5485
5486 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5487 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5488 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5489 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5490 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5491 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5492 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5493 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
5494 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
5495
5496 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5497 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5498 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5499 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
5500 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5501 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5502 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
5503
5504 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
5505 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
5506
5507 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
5508 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5509 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5510 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5511 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5512 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
5513 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5514 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5515 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
5516 kernel developers as
5517 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5518 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
5519 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5520 Lenovo forums, both for
5521 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5522 2012-11-10</a> and for
5523 <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
5524 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
5525 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5526 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5527 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5528 There is even a
5529 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5530 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5531 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
5532
5533 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5534 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
5535 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5536 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5537 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
5538 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5539 fixed. :)</p>
5540
5541       </div>
5542       <div class="tags">
5543
5544
5545         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>.
5546
5547
5548       </div>
5549     </div>
5550     <div class="padding"></div>
5551
5552     <div class="entry">
5553       <div class="title">
5554         <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>
5555       </div>
5556       <div class="date">
5557          4th July 2013
5558       </div>
5559       <div class="body">
5560         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5561 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5562 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
5563 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5564 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
5565 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
5566 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5567 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5568 with an expencive door stop.</p>
5569
5570 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5571 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5572 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
5573 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
5574 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5575 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5576 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
5577
5578 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5579 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5580 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
5581 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5582 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5583 new laptop now. :)</p>
5584
5585 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
5586
5587       </div>
5588       <div class="tags">
5589
5590
5591         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>.
5592
5593
5594       </div>
5595     </div>
5596     <div class="padding"></div>
5597
5598     <div class="entry">
5599       <div class="title">
5600         <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>
5601       </div>
5602       <div class="date">
5603         25th June 2013
5604       </div>
5605       <div class="body">
5606         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5607 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5608 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5609 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
5610 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5611 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
5612 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
5613 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5614 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5615 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5616 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
5617
5618 <p><pre>
5619 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5620 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5621 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5622 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5623 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5624 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5625 firmware-ipw2x00
5626 firmware-ipw2x00
5627 Preconfiguring packages ...
5628 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5629 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5630 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5631 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
5632 #
5633 </pre></p>
5634
5635 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5636 printed instead:</p>
5637
5638 <p><pre>
5639 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5640 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
5641 #
5642 </pre></p>
5643
5644 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5645 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
5646
5647 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
5648 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5649 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
5650 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5651 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5652 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
5653 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5654 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
5655 machine.</p>
5656
5657 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5658 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5659 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
5660 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5661 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5662 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
5663
5664       </div>
5665       <div class="tags">
5666
5667
5668         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>.
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/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>
5678       </div>
5679       <div class="date">
5680         11th June 2013
5681       </div>
5682       <div class="body">
5683         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
5684 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
5685 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
5686 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
5687 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
5688 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
5689 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
5690 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
5691 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
5692 i915 driver used by the
5693 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5694 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
5695
5696 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
5697 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
5698 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
5699 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
5700 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
5701
5702 <pre>
5703 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
5704 update-initramfs -u -k all
5705 </pre>
5706
5707 <p>Since March 2012 there is
5708 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
5709 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
5710 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
5711 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
5712 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
5713 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
5714 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
5715 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
5716 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
5717 number.</p>
5718
5719 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
5720 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
5721
5722 <p><pre>
5723 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
5724     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
5725     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
5726  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
5727  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
5728     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
5729  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
5730     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
5731  Latency: 0
5732  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
5733  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
5734  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
5735  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
5736  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
5737  Capabilities: <access denied>
5738  Kernel driver in use: i915
5739 </pre></p>
5740
5741 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
5742
5743 <p><pre>
5744 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
5745        ...
5746         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
5747         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
5748        ...
5749 }
5750 </pre></p>
5751
5752 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
5753 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
5754 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
5755 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
5756 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
5757 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
5758 yet shown up in
5759 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
5760 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
5761 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
5762 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
5763 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
5764 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
5765
5766 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
5767 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
5768 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
5769 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
5770 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
5771 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
5772 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
5773 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
5774 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
5775 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
5776 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
5777 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
5778
5779 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
5780 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
5781 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
5782 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
5783 backlight.</p>
5784
5785       </div>
5786       <div class="tags">
5787
5788
5789         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>.
5790
5791
5792       </div>
5793     </div>
5794     <div class="padding"></div>
5795
5796     <div class="entry">
5797       <div class="title">
5798         <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>
5799       </div>
5800       <div class="date">
5801         27th May 2013
5802       </div>
5803       <div class="body">
5804         <p>Two days ago, I asked
5805 <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
5806 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
5807 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
5808 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
5809 and Windows 8.</p>
5810
5811 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
5812 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
5813 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
5814 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
5815 enough to tell.</p>
5816
5817 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
5818 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
5819 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
5820 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
5821 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
5822 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
5823 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
5824 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
5825 to follow.</p>
5826
5827 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
5828 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
5829 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
5830 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
5831 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
5832 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
5833 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
5834 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
5835
5836 <p>I've updated the
5837 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
5838 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
5839 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
5840 machine.</p>
5841
5842 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
5843 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
5844
5845       </div>
5846       <div class="tags">
5847
5848
5849         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>.
5850
5851
5852       </div>
5853     </div>
5854     <div class="padding"></div>
5855
5856     <div class="entry">
5857       <div class="title">
5858         <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>
5859       </div>
5860       <div class="date">
5861         25th May 2013
5862       </div>
5863       <div class="body">
5864         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
5865 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
5866 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
5867 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
5868 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
5869 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
5870
5871 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
5872 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
5873 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
5874 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
5875 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
5876 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
5877 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
5878 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
5879 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
5880 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
5881
5882 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
5883 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
5884 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
5885 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
5886 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
5887 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
5888
5889 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
5890 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
5891 on new Laptops?</p>
5892
5893       </div>
5894       <div class="tags">
5895
5896
5897         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>.
5898
5899
5900       </div>
5901     </div>
5902     <div class="padding"></div>
5903
5904     <div class="entry">
5905       <div class="title">
5906         <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>
5907       </div>
5908       <div class="date">
5909         17th May 2013
5910       </div>
5911       <div class="body">
5912         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
5913 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
5914 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
5915 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
5916 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
5917 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
5918 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
5919 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
5920 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
5921 donate some money</a>.
5922
5923 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
5924 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
5925 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
5926 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
5927 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
5928
5929 <p>The script,
5930 <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/>
5931 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
5932 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
5933 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
5934
5935 <ol>
5936
5937 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
5938 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
5939 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
5940     our configuration.</li>
5941 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
5942     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
5943     according to the profile specified in the config above,
5944     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
5945 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
5946     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
5947 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
5948
5949 </ol>
5950
5951 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
5952 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
5953 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
5954 the needed packages.</p>
5955
5956 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
5957 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
5958 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
5959 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
5960 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
5961 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
5962
5963 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
5964 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
5965 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
5966
5967 <p><pre>
5968 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
5969 DESKTOP="lxde"
5970 </pre></p>
5971
5972 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
5973 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
5974 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
5975 boot.</p>
5976
5977       </div>
5978       <div class="tags">
5979
5980
5981         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>.
5982
5983
5984       </div>
5985     </div>
5986     <div class="padding"></div>
5987
5988     <div class="entry">
5989       <div class="title">
5990         <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>
5991       </div>
5992       <div class="date">
5993         11th May 2013
5994       </div>
5995       <div class="body">
5996         <P>In January,
5997 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
5998 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
5999 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6000 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
6001 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
6002 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
6003 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
6004 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
6005 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6006 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
6007 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
6008 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
6009
6010 <p><table>
6011 <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>
6012 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
6013 <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>
6014 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
6015 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
6016 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
6017 <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>
6018 <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>
6019 <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>
6020 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
6021 </table></p>
6022
6023 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6024 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
6025 available in experimental.</p>
6026
6027 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6028 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6029 for LEGO designers.</p>
6030
6031       </div>
6032       <div class="tags">
6033
6034
6035         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>.
6036
6037
6038       </div>
6039     </div>
6040     <div class="padding"></div>
6041
6042     <div class="entry">
6043       <div class="title">
6044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
6045       </div>
6046       <div class="date">
6047          5th May 2013
6048       </div>
6049       <div class="body">
6050         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6051 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6052 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
6053 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
6054 soon.</p>
6055
6056 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
6057 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
6058 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
6059 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
6060 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
6061 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
6062 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
6063 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
6064 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
6065 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
6066 Edu.</a>
6067
6068 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
6069 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
6070 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
6071 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
6072 follow.<p>
6073
6074       </div>
6075       <div class="tags">
6076
6077
6078         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>.
6079
6080
6081       </div>
6082     </div>
6083     <div class="padding"></div>
6084
6085     <div class="entry">
6086       <div class="title">
6087         <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>
6088       </div>
6089       <div class="date">
6090          3rd April 2013
6091       </div>
6092       <div class="body">
6093         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
6094 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
6095 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
6096 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
6097
6098 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
6099 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
6100 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
6101 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
6102 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
6103 BTS. :)</p>
6104
6105       </div>
6106       <div class="tags">
6107
6108
6109         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>.
6110
6111
6112       </div>
6113     </div>
6114     <div class="padding"></div>
6115
6116     <div class="entry">
6117       <div class="title">
6118         <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>
6119       </div>
6120       <div class="date">
6121          2nd February 2013
6122       </div>
6123       <div class="body">
6124         <p>My
6125 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
6126 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
6127 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
6128 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
6129 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
6130 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
6131 version too.</p>
6132
6133 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
6134 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
6135 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
6136 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
6137 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
6138 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
6139 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
6140 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
6141
6142 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
6143 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
6144 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
6145 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
6146 it. :)</p>
6147
6148 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6149 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6150 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6151
6152       </div>
6153       <div class="tags">
6154
6155
6156         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>.
6157
6158
6159       </div>
6160     </div>
6161     <div class="padding"></div>
6162
6163     <div class="entry">
6164       <div class="title">
6165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
6166       </div>
6167       <div class="date">
6168         22nd January 2013
6169       </div>
6170       <div class="body">
6171         <p>Yesterday, I
6172 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
6173 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
6174 pluggable hardware devices, which I
6175 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
6176 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
6177 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
6178 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
6179 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
6180 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
6181 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
6182 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
6183 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
6184 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
6185
6186 <pre>
6187 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
6188 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
6189 </pre>
6190
6191 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
6192 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
6193 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
6194 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
6195
6196 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
6197 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
6198 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
6199 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
6200 word.</p>
6201
6202 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
6203 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
6204 process.</p>
6205
6206 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
6207 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
6208
6209       </div>
6210       <div class="tags">
6211
6212
6213         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>.
6214
6215
6216       </div>
6217     </div>
6218     <div class="padding"></div>
6219
6220     <div class="entry">
6221       <div class="title">
6222         <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>
6223       </div>
6224       <div class="date">
6225         21st January 2013
6226       </div>
6227       <div class="body">
6228         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
6229 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
6230 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
6231 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
6232 it, fetch the
6233 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
6234 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
6235 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
6236 autostart script.</p>
6237
6238 <p>The design is simple:</p>
6239
6240 <ul>
6241
6242 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
6243 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
6244
6245 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
6246 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
6247 initially did.</li>
6248
6249 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
6250 the APT database, a database
6251 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
6252 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
6253
6254 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
6255 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
6256 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
6257 package or packages.</li>
6258
6259 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
6260 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
6261
6262 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
6263 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
6264
6265 </ul>
6266
6267 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
6268 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
6269 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
6270 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
6271
6272 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
6273 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
6274 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
6275 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
6276 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
6277
6278 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
6279 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
6280 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
6281 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
6282 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
6283 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
6284 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
6285 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
6286
6287 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
6288 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
6289 '<tt>svn checkout
6290 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
6291 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
6292 devscripts package.</p>
6293
6294 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
6295 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
6296 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
6297 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
6298 instructions</a> for details.</p>
6299
6300       </div>
6301       <div class="tags">
6302
6303
6304         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>.
6305
6306
6307       </div>
6308     </div>
6309     <div class="padding"></div>
6310
6311     <div class="entry">
6312       <div class="title">
6313         <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>
6314       </div>
6315       <div class="date">
6316         19th January 2013
6317       </div>
6318       <div class="body">
6319         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
6320 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
6321 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
6322 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
6323 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
6324 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
6325 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
6326 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
6327 not a durable solution.
6328
6329 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
6330 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
6331
6332 <ul>
6333
6334 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
6335   than A4).</li>
6336 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
6337 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
6338 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
6339 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
6340 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
6341 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
6342 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
6343 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
6344 size).</li>
6345 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
6346   X.org packages.</li>
6347 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
6348   the time).
6349
6350 </ul>
6351
6352 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
6353 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
6354 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
6355 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
6356 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
6357 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
6358 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
6359 still be useful.</p>
6360
6361 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
6362 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
6363 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
6364 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
6365 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
6366 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
6367
6368       </div>
6369       <div class="tags">
6370
6371
6372         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>.
6373
6374
6375       </div>
6376     </div>
6377     <div class="padding"></div>
6378
6379     <div class="entry">
6380       <div class="title">
6381         <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>
6382       </div>
6383       <div class="date">
6384         18th January 2013
6385       </div>
6386       <div class="body">
6387         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
6388 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
6389 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
6390 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
6391 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
6392 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
6393 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
6394
6395 <pre>
6396 #!/usr/bin/python
6397 import sys
6398 import apt
6399 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6400     cache = apt.Cache()
6401     cache.open(None)
6402     thepkgs = []
6403     for pkg in cache:
6404         version = pkg.candidate
6405         if version is None:
6406             version = pkg.installed
6407         if version is None:
6408             continue
6409         record = version.record
6410         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
6411             continue
6412         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
6413         for t in mime_types:
6414             t = t.rstrip().strip()
6415             if t == mimetype:
6416                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
6417     return thepkgs
6418 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
6419 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
6420     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
6421 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
6422 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
6423     print "  %s" %pkg
6424 </pre>
6425
6426 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
6427
6428 <pre>
6429 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
6430 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
6431   gecko-mediaplayer
6432 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
6433 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
6434   browser-plugin-gnash
6435 %
6436 </pre>
6437
6438 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
6439 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
6440 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
6441 anyone working on adding it?</p>
6442
6443 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
6444 request for icweasel support for this feature is
6445 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
6446 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
6447 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
6448 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
6449
6450       </div>
6451       <div class="tags">
6452
6453
6454         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>.
6455
6456
6457       </div>
6458     </div>
6459     <div class="padding"></div>
6460
6461     <div class="entry">
6462       <div class="title">
6463         <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>
6464       </div>
6465       <div class="date">
6466         16th January 2013
6467       </div>
6468       <div class="body">
6469         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
6470 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
6471 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
6472 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
6473 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
6474 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
6475 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
6476 downloaded by the browser.</p>
6477
6478 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
6479 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
6480 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
6481 can be found on the
6482 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
6483 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
6484 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
6485 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
6486 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
6487
6488 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
6489
6490 <pre>
6491   count MIME type
6492   ----- -----------------------
6493      32 text/plain
6494      30 audio/mpeg
6495      29 image/png
6496      28 image/jpeg
6497      27 application/ogg
6498      26 audio/x-mp3
6499      25 image/tiff
6500      25 image/gif
6501      22 image/bmp
6502      22 audio/x-wav
6503      20 audio/x-flac
6504      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6505      18 video/x-ms-asf
6506      18 audio/x-musepack
6507      18 audio/x-mpeg
6508      18 application/x-ogg
6509      17 video/mpeg
6510      17 audio/x-scpls
6511      17 audio/ogg
6512      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6513 </pre>
6514
6515 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
6516
6517 <pre>
6518   count MIME type
6519   ----- -----------------------
6520      33 text/plain
6521      32 image/png
6522      32 image/jpeg
6523      29 audio/mpeg
6524      27 image/gif
6525      26 image/tiff
6526      26 application/ogg
6527      25 audio/x-mp3
6528      22 image/bmp
6529      21 audio/x-wav
6530      19 audio/x-mpegurl
6531      19 audio/x-mpeg
6532      18 video/mpeg
6533      18 audio/x-scpls
6534      18 audio/x-flac
6535      18 application/x-ogg
6536      17 video/x-ms-asf
6537      17 text/html
6538      17 audio/x-musepack
6539      16 image/x-xbitmap
6540 </pre>
6541
6542 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
6543
6544 <pre>
6545   count MIME type
6546   ----- -----------------------
6547      31 text/plain
6548      31 image/png
6549      31 image/jpeg
6550      29 audio/mpeg
6551      28 application/ogg
6552      27 image/gif
6553      26 image/tiff
6554      26 audio/x-mp3
6555      23 audio/x-wav
6556      22 image/bmp
6557      21 audio/x-flac
6558      20 audio/x-mpegurl
6559      19 audio/x-mpeg
6560      18 video/x-ms-asf
6561      18 video/mpeg
6562      18 audio/x-scpls
6563      18 application/x-ogg
6564      17 audio/x-musepack
6565      16 video/x-ms-wmv
6566      16 video/x-msvideo
6567 </pre>
6568
6569 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
6570 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
6571 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
6572 issues.</p>
6573
6574 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
6575 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
6576
6577       </div>
6578       <div class="tags">
6579
6580
6581         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>.
6582
6583
6584       </div>
6585     </div>
6586     <div class="padding"></div>
6587
6588     <div class="entry">
6589       <div class="title">
6590         <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>
6591       </div>
6592       <div class="date">
6593         15th January 2013
6594       </div>
6595       <div class="body">
6596         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
6597 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
6598 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
6599 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
6600 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
6601 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
6602 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
6603 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
6604 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
6605 packages.</p>
6606
6607 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
6608 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
6609 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
6610 modalias.</p>
6611
6612 <p><blockquote>
6613 Package: package-name
6614 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
6615 </blockquote></p>
6616
6617 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
6618 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
6619
6620 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
6621 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
6622
6623 <p><blockquote>
6624 Package: cheese
6625 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
6626 </blockquote></p>
6627
6628 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
6629 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
6630
6631 <p><blockquote>
6632 Package: pcmciautils
6633 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
6634 </blockquote></p>
6635
6636 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
6637 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
6638
6639 <p><blockquote>
6640 Package: colorhug-client
6641 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
6642 </blockquote></p>
6643
6644 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
6645 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
6646 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
6647
6648 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
6649 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
6650 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
6651 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
6652 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
6653 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
6654 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
6655 Raring.</p>
6656
6657 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
6658 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
6659 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
6660 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
6661 try the
6662 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
6663 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
6664 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
6665 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
6666
6667 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
6668 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
6669
6670 <p><blockquote>
6671 % ./hw-support-lookup
6672 <br>yubikey-personalization
6673 <br>%
6674 </blockquote></p>
6675
6676 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
6677 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
6678
6679 <p><blockquote>
6680 % ./hw-support-lookup
6681 <br>pcmciautils
6682 <br>%
6683 </blockquote></p>
6684
6685 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
6686 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
6687 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
6688
6689 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
6690 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
6691 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
6692 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
6693 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
6694 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
6695 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
6696 see if it work.</p>
6697
6698 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6699 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6700 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6701 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6702
6703       </div>
6704       <div class="tags">
6705
6706
6707         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>.
6708
6709
6710       </div>
6711     </div>
6712     <div class="padding"></div>
6713
6714     <div class="entry">
6715       <div class="title">
6716         <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>
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="date">
6719         14th January 2013
6720       </div>
6721       <div class="body">
6722         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
6723 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
6724 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
6725 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
6726 in
6727 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
6728 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
6729
6730 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
6731
6732 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
6733 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
6734 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
6735 &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;,
6736 &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
6737 &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;.
6738
6739 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
6740 this shell script:</p>
6741
6742 <pre>
6743 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
6744 </pre>
6745
6746 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
6747 using modinfo:</p>
6748
6749 <pre>
6750 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
6751 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
6752 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
6753 %
6754 </pre>
6755
6756 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
6757
6758 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
6759 Bridge memory controller:</p>
6760
6761 <p><blockquote>
6762 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
6763 </blockquote></p>
6764
6765 <p>This represent these values:</p>
6766
6767 <pre>
6768  v   00008086  (vendor)
6769  d   00002770  (device)
6770  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
6771  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
6772  bc  06        (bus class)
6773  sc  00        (bus subclass)
6774  i   00        (interface)
6775 </pre>
6776
6777 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
6778 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
6779 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
6780 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
6781
6782 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
6783 means.</p>
6784
6785 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
6786
6787 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
6788 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
6789
6790 <p><blockquote>
6791 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
6792 </blockquote></p>
6793
6794 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
6795
6796 <pre>
6797  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
6798  p    0001  (device product)
6799  d    0206  (bcddevice)
6800  dc     09  (device class)
6801  dsc    00  (device subclass)
6802  dp     00  (device protocol)
6803  ic     09  (interface class)
6804  isc    00  (interface subclass)
6805  ip     00  (interface protocol)
6806 </pre>
6807
6808 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
6809 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
6810 these alias entries show up:</p>
6811
6812 <p><blockquote>
6813 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
6814 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
6815 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
6816 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
6817 </blockquote></p>
6818
6819 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
6820 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
6821 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
6822
6823 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
6824
6825 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
6826 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
6827
6828 <p><blockquote>
6829 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6830 </blockquote></p>
6831
6832 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
6833
6834 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
6835
6836 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
6837 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
6838 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
6839
6840 <p><blockquote>
6841 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
6842 </blockquote></p>
6843
6844 <p>The values present are</p>
6845
6846 <pre>
6847  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
6848  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
6849  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
6850  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
6851  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
6852  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
6853  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
6854  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
6855  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
6856  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
6857  ct   10             (chassis type)
6858  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
6859 </pre>
6860
6861 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
6862 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
6863
6864 <pre>
6865   3 Desktop
6866   4 Low Profile Desktop
6867   5 Pizza Box
6868   6 Mini Tower
6869   7 Tower
6870   8 Portable
6871   9 Laptop
6872  10 Notebook
6873  11 Hand Held
6874  12 Docking Station
6875  13 All In One
6876  14 Sub Notebook
6877  15 Space-saving
6878  16 Lunch Box
6879  17 Main Server Chassis
6880  18 Expansion Chassis
6881  19 Sub Chassis
6882  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
6883  21 Peripheral Chassis
6884  22 RAID Chassis
6885  23 Rack Mount Chassis
6886  24 Sealed-case PC
6887  25 Multi-system
6888  26 CompactPCI
6889  27 AdvancedTCA
6890  28 Blade
6891  29 Blade Enclosing
6892 </pre>
6893
6894 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
6895 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
6896 claim it is a desktop.</p>
6897
6898 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
6899
6900 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
6901 test machine:</p>
6902
6903 <p><blockquote>
6904 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
6905 </blockquote></p>
6906
6907 <p>The values present are</p>
6908
6909 <pre>
6910   ty  01  (type)
6911   pr  00  (prototype)
6912   id  00  (id)
6913   ex  00  (extra)
6914 </pre>
6915
6916 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
6917 the valid values are.</p>
6918
6919 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
6920
6921 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
6922 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
6923 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
6924 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
6925 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
6926 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
6927 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
6928
6929 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
6930
6931 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
6932 one can use the following shell script:</p>
6933
6934 <pre>
6935   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
6936     echo "$id" ; \
6937     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
6938   done
6939 </pre>
6940
6941 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
6942 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
6943
6944 <pre>
6945   acpi:ACPI0003:
6946     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
6947   acpi:device:
6948   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
6949   acpi:IBM0068:
6950     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
6951     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
6952     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
6953     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
6954   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
6955     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
6956     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
6957     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
6958   [...]
6959 </pre>
6960
6961 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
6962 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
6963 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
6964 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
6965
6966 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
6967 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
6968 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
6969
6970       </div>
6971       <div class="tags">
6972
6973
6974         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>.
6975
6976
6977       </div>
6978     </div>
6979     <div class="padding"></div>
6980
6981     <div class="entry">
6982       <div class="title">
6983         <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>
6984       </div>
6985       <div class="date">
6986         10th January 2013
6987       </div>
6988       <div class="body">
6989         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
6990 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
6991 Launcher and updated the Debian package
6992 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
6993 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
6994 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
6995 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
6996 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
6997 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
6998 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
6999 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
7000 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
7001 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
7002 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
7003 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
7004 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
7005 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
7006 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
7007
7008       </div>
7009       <div class="tags">
7010
7011
7012         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
7013
7014
7015       </div>
7016     </div>
7017     <div class="padding"></div>
7018
7019     <div class="entry">
7020       <div class="title">
7021         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
7022       </div>
7023       <div class="date">
7024          9th January 2013
7025       </div>
7026       <div class="body">
7027         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
7028 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
7029 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
7030 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
7031 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
7032 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
7033 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
7034 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
7035 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
7036 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
7037 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
7038
7039 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
7040 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
7041 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
7042 simple:
7043
7044 <ul>
7045
7046 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
7047   starting when a user log in.</li>
7048
7049 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
7050   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
7051
7052 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
7053   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
7054   packages.</li>
7055
7056 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
7057   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
7058
7059 </ul>
7060
7061 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
7062 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
7063 discover database to find packages and
7064 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
7065 packages.</p>
7066
7067 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
7068 draft package is now checked into
7069 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
7070 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
7071 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
7072 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
7073 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
7074 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
7075 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
7076 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
7077 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
7078 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
7079 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
7080 because of the freeze).</p>
7081
7082 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
7083 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
7084 inserted):</p>
7085
7086 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
7087
7088 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
7089 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
7090 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
7091
7092 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
7093 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
7094 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
7095 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
7096 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
7097 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
7098 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
7099
7100 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
7101 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
7102 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
7103 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
7104 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
7105 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
7106 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
7107 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
7108 not be installed?</p>
7109
7110 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
7111 please send me an email. :)</p>
7112
7113       </div>
7114       <div class="tags">
7115
7116
7117         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>.
7118
7119
7120       </div>
7121     </div>
7122     <div class="padding"></div>
7123
7124     <div class="entry">
7125       <div class="title">
7126         <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>
7127       </div>
7128       <div class="date">
7129          2nd January 2013
7130       </div>
7131       <div class="body">
7132         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
7133 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
7134 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
7135 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
7136 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
7137 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
7138 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
7139 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
7140 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
7141 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
7142
7143 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
7144 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
7145 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
7146
7147       </div>
7148       <div class="tags">
7149
7150
7151         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>.
7152
7153
7154       </div>
7155     </div>
7156     <div class="padding"></div>
7157
7158     <div class="entry">
7159       <div class="title">
7160         <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>
7161       </div>
7162       <div class="date">
7163         25th December 2012
7164       </div>
7165       <div class="body">
7166         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
7167 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
7168
7169 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
7170 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
7171 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
7172 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
7173 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
7174 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
7175 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
7176 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
7177 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
7178 name.</p>
7179
7180 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
7181 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
7182 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
7183
7184 <blockquote><pre>
7185 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
7186 cd bitcoin
7187 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
7188 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
7189 </pre></blockquote>
7190
7191 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
7192 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
7193 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
7194 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
7195 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
7196 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
7197 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
7198 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
7199 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
7200
7201 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7202 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7203 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7204
7205       </div>
7206       <div class="tags">
7207
7208
7209         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>.
7210
7211
7212       </div>
7213     </div>
7214     <div class="padding"></div>
7215
7216     <div class="entry">
7217       <div class="title">
7218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
7219       </div>
7220       <div class="date">
7221         21st December 2012
7222       </div>
7223       <div class="body">
7224         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
7225 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
7226 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
7227 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
7228 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
7229 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
7230 is now maintained by a
7231 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
7232 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
7233 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
7234 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
7235 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
7236 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
7237 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
7238 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
7239 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
7240 Corallo in a
7241 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
7242 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
7243 Debian package.</p>
7244
7245 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
7246 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
7247 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
7248 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
7249 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
7250 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
7251 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
7252 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
7253 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
7254 new version to unstable.
7255
7256 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
7257 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
7258 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
7259 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
7260 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
7261 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
7262 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
7263 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
7264 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
7265 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
7266 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
7267 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
7268 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
7269 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
7270 have not tested them.</p>
7271
7272 <p>My
7273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
7274 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
7275 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
7276 years ago, as can be
7277 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
7278 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
7279 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
7280 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
7281 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
7282 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
7283 the same address as last time,
7284 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7285
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="tags">
7288
7289
7290         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>.
7291
7292
7293       </div>
7294     </div>
7295     <div class="padding"></div>
7296
7297     <div class="entry">
7298       <div class="title">
7299         <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>
7300       </div>
7301       <div class="date">
7302          7th September 2012
7303       </div>
7304       <div class="body">
7305         <p>As I
7306 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
7307 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
7308 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
7309 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
7310 repository for the project</a>.</p>
7311
7312 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
7313 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
7314 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
7315 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
7316
7317 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
7318 PostScript formats at
7319 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
7320 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
7321
7322       </div>
7323       <div class="tags">
7324
7325
7326         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>.
7327
7328
7329       </div>
7330     </div>
7331     <div class="padding"></div>
7332
7333     <div class="entry">
7334       <div class="title">
7335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
7336       </div>
7337       <div class="date">
7338         16th August 2012
7339       </div>
7340       <div class="body">
7341         <p>I dag fyller
7342 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
7343 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
7344 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
7345
7346       </div>
7347       <div class="tags">
7348
7349
7350         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>.
7351
7352
7353       </div>
7354     </div>
7355     <div class="padding"></div>
7356
7357     <div class="entry">
7358       <div class="title">
7359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7360       </div>
7361       <div class="date">
7362         24th June 2012
7363       </div>
7364       <div class="body">
7365         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7366 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7367 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7368 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7369 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7370 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7371 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7372 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7373 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7374 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7375 missing in my book.</p>
7376
7377 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7378 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7379 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7380 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7381 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7382 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7383 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7384
7385       </div>
7386       <div class="tags">
7387
7388
7389         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>.
7390
7391
7392       </div>
7393     </div>
7394     <div class="padding"></div>
7395
7396     <div class="entry">
7397       <div class="title">
7398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
7399       </div>
7400       <div class="date">
7401         21st November 2011
7402       </div>
7403       <div class="body">
7404         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
7405 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
7406 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
7407 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
7408 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
7409 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
7410 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
7411 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
7412 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
7413 the tools to do so.</p>
7414
7415 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
7416 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
7417 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
7418 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
7419
7420 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
7421 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
7422 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
7423 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
7424 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
7425 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
7426 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
7427 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
7428
7429 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
7430 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
7431 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
7432
7433 <p><pre>
7434 #!/usr/bin/perl
7435 use strict;
7436 use warnings;
7437 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
7438 BEGIN {
7439     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
7440     my %rhelmodules = (
7441         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
7442         );
7443     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
7444         eval "use $module;";
7445         if ($@) {
7446             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
7447             system("yum install -y $pkg");
7448             eval "use $module;";
7449         }
7450     }
7451 }
7452 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
7453
7454 upgrade_dell();
7455
7456 exit 0;
7457
7458 sub run_firmware_script {
7459     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
7460     unless ($script) {
7461         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
7462         exit 1
7463     }
7464     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
7465
7466     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
7467         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
7468     } else {
7469         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
7470     }
7471 }
7472
7473 sub run_firmware_scripts {
7474     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
7475     # Run firmware packages
7476     for my $dir (@dirs) {
7477         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
7478         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
7479         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
7480             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
7481             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
7482         }
7483         closedir $dh;
7484     }
7485 }
7486
7487 sub download {
7488     my $url = shift;
7489     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
7490     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
7491 }
7492
7493 sub upgrade_dell {
7494     my @dirs;
7495     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7496     chomp $product;
7497
7498     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
7499
7500         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
7501         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
7502
7503         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
7504             CLEANUP => 1
7505             );
7506         chdir($tmpdir);
7507         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
7508         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
7509         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
7510         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
7511         my $fwopts = "-q";
7512         if (@paths) {
7513             for my $url (@paths) {
7514                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
7515             }
7516             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
7517         } else {
7518             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7519             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7520         }
7521         chdir('/');
7522     } else {
7523         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
7524         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
7525     }
7526 }
7527
7528 sub fetch_dell_fw {
7529     my $path = shift;
7530     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
7531     download($url);
7532 }
7533
7534 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
7535 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
7536 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
7537 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
7538     my $filename = shift;
7539
7540     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
7541     chomp $product;
7542     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
7543
7544     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
7545
7546     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
7547     my @paths;
7548     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
7549         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
7550         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
7551         my $oscode;
7552         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
7553             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
7554         } else {
7555             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
7556         }
7557         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
7558         {
7559             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
7560         }
7561     }
7562     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
7563         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
7564
7565         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
7566         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
7567
7568         my $cpath = $component->{path};
7569         for my $path (@paths) {
7570             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
7571                 push(@paths, $cpath);
7572             }
7573         }
7574     }
7575     return @paths;
7576 }
7577 </pre>
7578
7579 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
7580 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
7581 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
7582 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
7583 outdated.</p>
7584
7585       </div>
7586       <div class="tags">
7587
7588
7589         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>.
7590
7591
7592       </div>
7593     </div>
7594     <div class="padding"></div>
7595
7596     <div class="entry">
7597       <div class="title">
7598         <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>
7599       </div>
7600       <div class="date">
7601          4th August 2011
7602       </div>
7603       <div class="body">
7604         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
7605 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
7606 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
7607 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
7608 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
7609 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
7610 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
7611 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
7612 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
7613
7614 <p><blockquote>
7615 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
7616 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
7617 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
7618 </blockquote></p>
7619
7620 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
7621 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
7622 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
7623 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
7624 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
7625 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
7626 hard to explain.</p>
7627
7628 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
7629 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
7630 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
7631 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
7632 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
7633 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
7634 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
7635 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
7636 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
7637 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
7638 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
7639 mode).</p>
7640
7641 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
7642 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
7643 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
7644 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
7645 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
7646 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
7647 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
7648 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
7649 after visiting single user mode.</p>
7650
7651 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
7652 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
7653 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
7654 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
7655 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
7656 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
7657 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
7658 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
7659
7660 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
7661 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
7662 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
7663
7664       </div>
7665       <div class="tags">
7666
7667
7668         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>.
7669
7670
7671       </div>
7672     </div>
7673     <div class="padding"></div>
7674
7675     <div class="entry">
7676       <div class="title">
7677         <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>
7678       </div>
7679       <div class="date">
7680         30th July 2011
7681       </div>
7682       <div class="body">
7683         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
7684 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
7685 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
7686 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
7687 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
7688 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
7689 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
7690 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
7691 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
7692 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
7693 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
7694 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
7695 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
7696
7697 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
7698 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
7699 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
7700 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
7701 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
7702 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
7703 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
7704 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
7705 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
7706
7707 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
7708 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
7709 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
7710 is presented.</p>
7711
7712 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
7713 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
7714 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
7715 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
7716 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
7717 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
7718 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
7719 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
7720 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
7721 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
7722 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
7723 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
7724 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
7725 find time to push this forward.</p>
7726
7727       </div>
7728       <div class="tags">
7729
7730
7731         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>.
7732
7733
7734       </div>
7735     </div>
7736     <div class="padding"></div>
7737
7738     <div class="entry">
7739       <div class="title">
7740         <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>
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="date">
7743         29th July 2011
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="body">
7746         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
7747 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
7748 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
7749 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
7750 issues.</p>
7751
7752 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
7753 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
7754 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
7755
7756 <ol>
7757
7758 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
7759 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
7760 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
7761 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
7762 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
7763 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
7764 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
7765 Debian.</li>
7766
7767 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
7768 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
7769 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
7770 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
7771 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
7772 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
7773 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
7774 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
7775 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
7776 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
7777 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
7778 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
7779 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
7780
7781 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
7782 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
7783 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
7784 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
7785 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
7786 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
7787 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
7788 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
7789 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
7790 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
7791
7792 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
7793 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
7794 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
7795 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
7796 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
7797 latter behaviour.</li>
7798
7799 </ol>
7800
7801 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
7802 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
7803 it do not matter much.</p>
7804
7805 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7806 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
7807 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7808
7809       </div>
7810       <div class="tags">
7811
7812
7813         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>.
7814
7815
7816       </div>
7817     </div>
7818     <div class="padding"></div>
7819
7820     <div class="entry">
7821       <div class="title">
7822         <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>
7823       </div>
7824       <div class="date">
7825         26th July 2011
7826       </div>
7827       <div class="body">
7828         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7829 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7830 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7831 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7832 security support for a few years.</p>
7833
7834 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7835 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
7836 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7837 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7838 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
7839 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7840 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7841 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7842 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7843 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7844 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7845 easier in the future.</p>
7846
7847 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7848 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7849 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
7850 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7851 do not have time for.</p>
7852
7853       </div>
7854       <div class="tags">
7855
7856
7857         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>.
7858
7859
7860       </div>
7861     </div>
7862     <div class="padding"></div>
7863
7864     <div class="entry">
7865       <div class="title">
7866         <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>
7867       </div>
7868       <div class="date">
7869          3rd April 2011
7870       </div>
7871       <div class="body">
7872         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
7873 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7874 update in English.</p>
7875
7876 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7877 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7878 of the British service
7879 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7880 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
7881 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7882 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
7883 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7884 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
7885 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7886 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7887 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
7888 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7889 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7890 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7891 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7892
7893 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7894 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
7895 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7896 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
7897 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7898 public infrastructure.</p>
7899
7900 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7901 such service?</p>
7902
7903       </div>
7904       <div class="tags">
7905
7906
7907         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>.
7908
7909
7910       </div>
7911     </div>
7912     <div class="padding"></div>
7913
7914     <div class="entry">
7915       <div class="title">
7916         <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>
7917       </div>
7918       <div class="date">
7919         28th January 2011
7920       </div>
7921       <div class="body">
7922         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7923 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
7924 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7925 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7926 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
7927 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
7928 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7929 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7930 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7931 out which security holes were present in our free software
7932 collection.</p>
7933
7934 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7935 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7936 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
7937 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7938 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
7939 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
7940 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
7941 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
7942 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
7943 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
7944 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
7945 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
7946 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
7947 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
7948 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
7949 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
7950
7951 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
7952 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
7953 check out, one could look up
7954 <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
7955 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
7956 The most recent one is
7957 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
7958 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
7959 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
7960
7961 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7962 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
7963 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7964 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
7965 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7966 security issues out.</p>
7967
7968 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7969 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
7970 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
7971 RHEL is providing
7972 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
7973 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7974 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7975
7976 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7977 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7978 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
7979 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7980 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7981 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
7982 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7983 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
7984 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7985 established soon.</p>
7986
7987 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7988 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7989 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7990 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7991 for their packages.</p>
7992
7993       </div>
7994       <div class="tags">
7995
7996
7997         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>.
7998
7999
8000       </div>
8001     </div>
8002     <div class="padding"></div>
8003
8004     <div class="entry">
8005       <div class="title">
8006         <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>
8007       </div>
8008       <div class="date">
8009         23rd January 2011
8010       </div>
8011       <div class="body">
8012         <p>In the
8013 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
8014 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
8015 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
8016 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
8017 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
8018 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
8019 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
8020 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
8021 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
8022 one of my machines like this:</p>
8023
8024 <pre>
8025 loaded modules:
8026 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
8027 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
8028 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
8029 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
8030 10de:03ec pata_amd
8031 10de:03f6 sata_nv
8032 1022:1103 k8temp
8033 109e:036e bttv
8034 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
8035 11ab:4364 sky2
8036 </pre>
8037
8038 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
8039 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
8040
8041 <pre>
8042 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
8043     echo loaded pci modules:
8044     (
8045         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
8046         for address in * ; do
8047             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8048                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8049                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8050                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8051                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
8052                     echo "$id $module"
8053                 fi
8054             fi
8055         done
8056     )
8057     echo
8058 fi
8059 </pre>
8060
8061 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
8062 mappings:</p>
8063
8064 <pre>
8065 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
8066     echo loaded usb modules:
8067     (
8068         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
8069         for address in * ; do
8070             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
8071                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8072                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
8073                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8074                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
8075                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
8076                         echo "$id $module"
8077                     fi
8078                 fi
8079             fi
8080         done
8081     )
8082     echo
8083 fi
8084 </pre>
8085
8086 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
8087 well.</p>
8088
8089       </div>
8090       <div class="tags">
8091
8092
8093         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>.
8094
8095
8096       </div>
8097     </div>
8098     <div class="padding"></div>
8099
8100     <div class="entry">
8101       <div class="title">
8102         <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>
8103       </div>
8104       <div class="date">
8105         22nd December 2010
8106       </div>
8107       <div class="body">
8108         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
8109 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
8110 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
8111 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8112 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
8113 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
8114 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8115 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8116 university.</p>
8117
8118 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8119 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
8120 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8121 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
8122 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8123 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8124 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8125 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
8126
8127 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
8128 I perform on a new model.</p>
8129
8130 <ul>
8131
8132 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8133 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
8134 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
8135
8136 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
8137 installation, X.org is working.</li>
8138
8139 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
8140 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8141 reported by the program.</li>
8142
8143 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8144 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
8145 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8146 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
8147 normally test this by playing
8148 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8149 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
8150
8151 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
8152 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8153
8154 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8155 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8156
8157 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
8158 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
8159
8160 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8161 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
8162 few.</li>
8163
8164 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
8165 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8166 notice this.</li>
8167
8168 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
8169 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8170 resume.</li>
8171
8172 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8173 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8174 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
8175 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8176 not.</li>
8177
8178 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8179 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8180 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8181 existence.</li>
8182
8183 </ul>
8184
8185 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8186 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
8187 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
8188 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8189 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
8190 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
8191 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8192 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
8193
8194       </div>
8195       <div class="tags">
8196
8197
8198         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>.
8199
8200
8201       </div>
8202     </div>
8203     <div class="padding"></div>
8204
8205     <div class="entry">
8206       <div class="title">
8207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
8208       </div>
8209       <div class="date">
8210         11th December 2010
8211       </div>
8212       <div class="body">
8213         <p>As I continue to explore
8214 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
8215 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8216 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
8217
8218 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8219 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8220 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8221 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8222 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8223 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
8224 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
8225 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
8226 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
8227 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
8228 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
8229 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
8230 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
8231 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8232 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8233 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8234 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
8235 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8236 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8237 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
8238
8239 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8240 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8241 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8242 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8243 If the Skolelinux foundation
8244 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8245 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8246 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8247 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8248 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
8249 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
8250 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8251 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
8252
8253 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8254 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
8255 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8256 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8257 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
8258 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8259 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
8260 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8261 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8262 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8263 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
8264 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8265 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8266 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8267 currencies.</p>
8268
8269 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8270 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8271 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8272 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
8273 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8274 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8275 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8276 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
8277 BitCoins.  Check out
8278 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
8279 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
8280 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8281 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8282 yet.</p>
8283
8284 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
8285 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8286 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8287 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
8288 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
8289
8290       </div>
8291       <div class="tags">
8292
8293
8294         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>.
8295
8296
8297       </div>
8298     </div>
8299     <div class="padding"></div>
8300
8301     <div class="entry">
8302       <div class="title">
8303         <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>
8304       </div>
8305       <div class="date">
8306         10th December 2010
8307       </div>
8308       <div class="body">
8309         <p>With this weeks lawless
8310 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8311 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
8312 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8313 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8314 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8315 A blog post from
8316 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8317 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8318 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8319 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
8320 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8321 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8322 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
8323
8324 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
8325 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8326 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8327 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8328 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
8329 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
8330 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8331 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
8332 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8333 Debian</a> soon.</p>
8334
8335 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8336 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8337 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8338 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
8339 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
8340 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8341 you can even get
8342 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
8343 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
8344 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
8345 on the current exchange rates.</p>
8346
8347 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8348 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8349 donations to the address
8350 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
8351
8352       </div>
8353       <div class="tags">
8354
8355
8356         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>.
8357
8358
8359       </div>
8360     </div>
8361     <div class="padding"></div>
8362
8363     <div class="entry">
8364       <div class="title">
8365         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
8366       </div>
8367       <div class="date">
8368         27th November 2010
8369       </div>
8370       <div class="body">
8371         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8372 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8373 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8374 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8375 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8376 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8377 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8378 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
8379
8380 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8381 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8382 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8383 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8384 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8385 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8386 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8387 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8388 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8389 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8390 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
8391
8392 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8393 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8394 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8395 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8396 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8397 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8398 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8399 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8400 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8401 what is going on.</p>
8402
8403       </div>
8404       <div class="tags">
8405
8406
8407         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>.
8408
8409
8410       </div>
8411     </div>
8412     <div class="padding"></div>
8413
8414     <div class="entry">
8415       <div class="title">
8416         <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>
8417       </div>
8418       <div class="date">
8419         22nd November 2010
8420       </div>
8421       <div class="body">
8422         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8423 upgrade testing of the
8424 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8425 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
8426 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8427 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
8428
8429 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8430
8431 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8432
8433 <blockquote><p>
8434   apache2.2-bin
8435   aptdaemon
8436   baobab
8437   binfmt-support
8438   browser-plugin-gnash
8439   cheese-common
8440   cli-common
8441   cups-pk-helper
8442   dmz-cursor-theme
8443   empathy
8444   empathy-common
8445   freedesktop-sound-theme
8446   freeglut3
8447   gconf-defaults-service
8448   gdm-themes
8449   gedit-plugins
8450   geoclue
8451   geoclue-hostip
8452   geoclue-localnet
8453   geoclue-manual
8454   geoclue-yahoo
8455   gnash
8456   gnash-common
8457   gnome
8458   gnome-backgrounds
8459   gnome-cards-data
8460   gnome-codec-install
8461   gnome-core
8462   gnome-desktop-environment
8463   gnome-disk-utility
8464   gnome-screenshot
8465   gnome-search-tool
8466   gnome-session-canberra
8467   gnome-system-log
8468   gnome-themes-extras
8469   gnome-themes-more
8470   gnome-user-share
8471   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8472   gstreamer0.10-tools
8473   gtk2-engines
8474   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8475   gtk2-engines-smooth
8476   hamster-applet
8477   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8478   libapr1
8479   libaprutil1
8480   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8481   libaprutil1-ldap
8482   libart2.0-cil
8483   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8484   libboost-python1.42.0
8485   libboost-thread1.42.0
8486   libchamplain-0.4-0
8487   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8488   libcheese-gtk18
8489   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8490   libcryptui0
8491   libdiscid0
8492   libelf1
8493   libepc-1.0-2
8494   libepc-common
8495   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8496   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8497   libfreerdp0
8498   libgconf2.0-cil
8499   libgdata-common
8500   libgdata7
8501   libgdu-gtk0
8502   libgee2
8503   libgeoclue0
8504   libgexiv2-0
8505   libgif4
8506   libglade2.0-cil
8507   libglib2.0-cil
8508   libgmime2.4-cil
8509   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8510   libgnome2.24-cil
8511   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8512   libgpod-common
8513   libgpod4
8514   libgtk2.0-cil
8515   libgtkglext1
8516   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8517   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8518   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8519   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8520   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8521   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8522   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8523   libmono-security2.0-cil
8524   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8525   libmono-system2.0-cil
8526   libmtp8
8527   libmusicbrainz3-6
8528   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8529   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8530   libopal3.6.8
8531   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8532   libpt2.6.7
8533   libpython2.6
8534   librpm1
8535   librpmio1
8536   libsdl1.2debian
8537   libsrtp0
8538   libssh-4
8539   libtelepathy-farsight0
8540   libtelepathy-glib0
8541   libtidy-0.99-0
8542   media-player-info
8543   mesa-utils
8544   mono-2.0-gac
8545   mono-gac
8546   mono-runtime
8547   nautilus-sendto
8548   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8549   p7zip-full
8550   pkg-config
8551   python-aptdaemon
8552   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8553   python-axiom
8554   python-beautifulsoup
8555   python-bugbuddy
8556   python-clientform
8557   python-coherence
8558   python-configobj
8559   python-crypto
8560   python-cupshelpers
8561   python-elementtree
8562   python-epsilon
8563   python-evolution
8564   python-feedparser
8565   python-gdata
8566   python-gdbm
8567   python-gst0.10
8568   python-gtkglext1
8569   python-gtksourceview2
8570   python-httplib2
8571   python-louie
8572   python-mako
8573   python-markupsafe
8574   python-mechanize
8575   python-nevow
8576   python-notify
8577   python-opengl
8578   python-openssl
8579   python-pam
8580   python-pkg-resources
8581   python-pyasn1
8582   python-pysqlite2
8583   python-rdflib
8584   python-serial
8585   python-tagpy
8586   python-twisted-bin
8587   python-twisted-conch
8588   python-twisted-core
8589   python-twisted-web
8590   python-utidylib
8591   python-webkit
8592   python-xdg
8593   python-zope.interface
8594   remmina
8595   remmina-plugin-data
8596   remmina-plugin-rdp
8597   remmina-plugin-vnc
8598   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8599   rhythmbox-plugins
8600   rpm-common
8601   rpm2cpio
8602   seahorse-plugins
8603   shotwell
8604   software-center
8605   system-config-printer-udev
8606   telepathy-gabble
8607   telepathy-mission-control-5
8608   telepathy-salut
8609   tomboy
8610   totem
8611   totem-coherence
8612   totem-mozilla
8613   totem-plugins
8614   transmission-common
8615   xdg-user-dirs
8616   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8617   xserver-xephyr
8618 </p></blockquote>
8619
8620 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8621
8622 <blockquote><p>
8623   cheese
8624   ekiga
8625   eog
8626   epiphany-extensions
8627   evolution-exchange
8628   fast-user-switch-applet
8629   file-roller
8630   gcalctool
8631   gconf-editor
8632   gdm
8633   gedit
8634   gedit-common
8635   gnome-games
8636   gnome-games-data
8637   gnome-nettool
8638   gnome-system-tools
8639   gnome-themes
8640   gnuchess
8641   gucharmap
8642   guile-1.8-libs
8643   libavahi-ui0
8644   libdmx1
8645   libgalago3
8646   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8647   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8648   liblircclient0
8649   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8650   libspeexdsp1
8651   libsvga1
8652   rhythmbox
8653   seahorse
8654   sound-juicer
8655   system-config-printer
8656   totem-common
8657   transmission-gtk
8658   vinagre
8659   vino
8660 </p></blockquote>
8661
8662 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8663
8664 <blockquote><p>
8665   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8666 </p></blockquote>
8667
8668 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8669
8670 <blockquote><p>
8671 [nothing]
8672 </p></blockquote>
8673
8674 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8675
8676 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8677
8678 <blockquote><p>
8679   ksmserver
8680 </p></blockquote>
8681
8682 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8683
8684 <blockquote><p>
8685   kwin
8686   network-manager-kde
8687 </p></blockquote>
8688
8689 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8690
8691 <blockquote><p>
8692   arts
8693   dolphin
8694   freespacenotifier
8695   google-gadgets-gst
8696   google-gadgets-xul
8697   kappfinder
8698   kcalc
8699   kcharselect
8700   kde-core
8701   kde-plasma-desktop
8702   kde-standard
8703   kde-window-manager
8704   kdeartwork
8705   kdeartwork-emoticons
8706   kdeartwork-style
8707   kdeartwork-theme-icon
8708   kdebase
8709   kdebase-apps
8710   kdebase-workspace
8711   kdebase-workspace-bin
8712   kdebase-workspace-data
8713   kdeeject
8714   kdelibs
8715   kdeplasma-addons
8716   kdeutils
8717   kdewallpapers
8718   kdf
8719   kfloppy
8720   kgpg
8721   khelpcenter4
8722   kinfocenter
8723   konq-plugins-l10n
8724   konqueror-nsplugins
8725   kscreensaver
8726   kscreensaver-xsavers
8727   ktimer
8728   kwrite
8729   libgle3
8730   libkde4-ruby1.8
8731   libkonq5
8732   libkonq5-templates
8733   libnetpbm10
8734   libplasma-ruby
8735   libplasma-ruby1.8
8736   libqt4-ruby1.8
8737   marble-data
8738   marble-plugins
8739   netpbm
8740   nuvola-icon-theme
8741   plasma-dataengines-workspace
8742   plasma-desktop
8743   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8744   plasma-runners-addons
8745   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8746   plasma-scriptengine-python
8747   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8748   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8749   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8750   plasma-scriptengines
8751   plasma-wallpapers-addons
8752   plasma-widget-folderview
8753   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8754   ruby
8755   sweeper
8756   update-notifier-kde
8757   xscreensaver-data-extra
8758   xscreensaver-gl
8759   xscreensaver-gl-extra
8760   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8761 </p></blockquote>
8762
8763 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8764
8765 <blockquote><p>
8766   ark
8767   google-gadgets-common
8768   google-gadgets-qt
8769   htdig
8770   kate
8771   kdebase-bin
8772   kdebase-data
8773   kdepasswd
8774   kfind
8775   klipper
8776   konq-plugins
8777   konqueror
8778   ksysguard
8779   ksysguardd
8780   libarchive1
8781   libcln6
8782   libeet1
8783   libeina-svn-06
8784   libggadget-1.0-0b
8785   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
8786   libgps19
8787   libkdecorations4
8788   libkephal4
8789   libkonq4
8790   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8791   libkscreensaver5
8792   libksgrd4
8793   libksignalplotter4
8794   libkunitconversion4
8795   libkwineffects1a
8796   libmarblewidget4
8797   libntrack-qt4-1
8798   libntrack0
8799   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8800   libplasmaclock4a
8801   libplasmagenericshell4
8802   libprocesscore4a
8803   libprocessui4a
8804   libqalculate5
8805   libqedje0a
8806   libqtruby4shared2
8807   libqzion0a
8808   libruby1.8
8809   libscim8c2a
8810   libsmokekdecore4-3
8811   libsmokekdeui4-3
8812   libsmokekfile3
8813   libsmokekhtml3
8814   libsmokekio3
8815   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8816   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8817   libsmokekparts3
8818   libsmokektexteditor3
8819   libsmokekutils3
8820   libsmokenepomuk3
8821   libsmokephonon3
8822   libsmokeplasma3
8823   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8824   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8825   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8826   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8827   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8828   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8829   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8830   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8831   libsmokeqttest4-3
8832   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8833   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8834   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8835   libsmokesolid3
8836   libsmokesoprano3
8837   libtaskmanager4a
8838   libtidy-0.99-0
8839   libweather-ion4a
8840   libxklavier16
8841   libxxf86misc1
8842   okteta
8843   oxygencursors
8844   plasma-dataengines-addons
8845   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8846   plasma-widget-lancelot
8847   plasma-widgets-addons
8848   plasma-widgets-workspace
8849   polkit-kde-1
8850   ruby1.8
8851   systemsettings
8852   update-notifier-common
8853 </p></blockquote>
8854
8855 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8856 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8857 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8858 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
8859
8860       </div>
8861       <div class="tags">
8862
8863
8864         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>.
8865
8866
8867       </div>
8868     </div>
8869     <div class="padding"></div>
8870
8871     <div class="entry">
8872       <div class="title">
8873         <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>
8874       </div>
8875       <div class="date">
8876         22nd November 2010
8877       </div>
8878       <div class="body">
8879         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8880 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
8881 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8882 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8883 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8884 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8885 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8886 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8887 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
8888
8889 <p>I found
8890 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8891 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8892 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8893 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8894 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8895 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
8896
8897 <pre>
8898 #!/bin/sh
8899
8900 # Based on
8901 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8902
8903 set -e
8904 set -x
8905
8906 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
8907     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
8908     exit 1
8909 else
8910     host="$1"
8911 fi
8912
8913 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8914     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8915     exit 1
8916 fi
8917
8918 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8919 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8920 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8921 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8922
8923 img=$host.img
8924 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8925 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8926
8927 parted $img mklabel msdos
8928 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8929 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8930 parted $img set 1 boot on
8931
8932 modprobe dm-mod
8933 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8934 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8935
8936 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8937 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8938 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8939
8940 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8941 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8942 </pre>
8943
8944 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8945 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
8946
8947 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8948 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8949 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8950 seem to work just fine.</p>
8951
8952       </div>
8953       <div class="tags">
8954
8955
8956         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>.
8957
8958
8959       </div>
8960     </div>
8961     <div class="padding"></div>
8962
8963     <div class="entry">
8964       <div class="title">
8965         <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>
8966       </div>
8967       <div class="date">
8968         20th November 2010
8969       </div>
8970       <div class="body">
8971         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8972 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8973 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8974 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
8975
8976 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8977 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8978 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
8979
8980 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8981
8982 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8983
8984 <blockquote><p>
8985   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8986   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8987   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8988   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8989   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8990   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8991   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8992   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8993   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8994   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8995   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8996   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8997   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8998   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8999   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9000   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
9001   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9002   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
9003   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9004   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9005   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
9006   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9007   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9008   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9009   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9010   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9011   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9012   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9013   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9014   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
9015   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
9016   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9017   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9018   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
9019   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
9020   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9021   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9022   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9023   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
9024   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9025   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9026   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9027   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9028   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9029   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9030   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9031   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9032   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9033   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9034   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9035   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9036   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9037   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9038   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9039   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9040   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9041   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9042   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9043   zip
9044 </p></blockquote>
9045
9046 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9047
9048 <blockquote><p>
9049   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9050   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9051   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9052   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9053   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9054   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9055   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9056   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
9057   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9058   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
9059   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9060   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9061   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9062   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9063   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9064   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
9065   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9066   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9067   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9068   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9069   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
9070   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
9071   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9072   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
9073   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9074   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9075   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9076   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9077   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9078 </p></blockquote>
9079
9080 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9081
9082 <blockquote><p>
9083   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9084 </p></blockquote>
9085
9086 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9087
9088 <blockquote><p>
9089 [nothing]
9090 </p></blockquote>
9091
9092 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9093
9094 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9095
9096 <blockquote><p>
9097   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
9098   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9099   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9100   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9101   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9102   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9103   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9104   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9105   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9106   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9107   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9108   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9109   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9110   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9111   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
9112   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9113   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9114   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9115   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9116   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9117   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9118   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9119   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9120   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9121   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9122   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9123   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9124   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9125   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9126   ttf-sazanami-gothic
9127 </p></blockquote>
9128
9129 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9130
9131 <blockquote><p>
9132   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9133   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9134   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9135   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9136   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9137   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9138   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9139   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9140   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9141   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9142   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9143   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9144   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9145   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9146   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9147   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9148   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
9149   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9150   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9151   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
9152   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9153   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9154   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9155   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9156   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9157   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9158   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9159   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
9160   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
9161   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9162   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9163   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9164   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9165 </p></blockquote>
9166
9167 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9168
9169 <blockquote><p>
9170   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9171   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9172   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9173   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9174   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9175   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9176   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9177 </p></blockquote>
9178
9179 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9180
9181 <blockquote><p>
9182   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9183 </p></blockquote>
9184
9185       </div>
9186       <div class="tags">
9187
9188
9189         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>.
9190
9191
9192       </div>
9193     </div>
9194     <div class="padding"></div>
9195
9196     <div class="entry">
9197       <div class="title">
9198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
9199       </div>
9200       <div class="date">
9201         20th November 2010
9202       </div>
9203       <div class="body">
9204         <p>Answering
9205 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9206 call from the Gnash project</a> for
9207 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
9208 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9209 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9210 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9211 releases out more often.</p>
9212
9213 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9214 I have considered setting up a <a
9215 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
9216 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9217 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
9218 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
9219 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9220 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9221 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9222 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
9223 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9224 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9225 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
9226 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
9227
9228       </div>
9229       <div class="tags">
9230
9231
9232         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>.
9233
9234
9235       </div>
9236     </div>
9237     <div class="padding"></div>
9238
9239     <div class="entry">
9240       <div class="title">
9241         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
9242       </div>
9243       <div class="date">
9244          9th November 2010
9245       </div>
9246       <div class="body">
9247         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9248
9249 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
9250 3D linked in from
9251 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9252 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
9253
9254       </div>
9255       <div class="tags">
9256
9257
9258         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>.
9259
9260
9261       </div>
9262     </div>
9263     <div class="padding"></div>
9264
9265     <div class="entry">
9266       <div class="title">
9267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
9268       </div>
9269       <div class="date">
9270         24th October 2010
9271       </div>
9272       <div class="body">
9273         <p>Some updates.</p>
9274
9275 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
9276 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
9277 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
9278 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9279 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
9280 :)</p>
9281
9282 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9283 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9284 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9285 It is called
9286 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
9287 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
9288 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9289 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9290 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9291 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
9292
9293 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
9294 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9295 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
9296 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9297 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
9298 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9299 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9300 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
9301 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9302 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
9303
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="tags">
9306
9307
9308         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>.
9309
9310
9311       </div>
9312     </div>
9313     <div class="padding"></div>
9314
9315     <div class="entry">
9316       <div class="title">
9317         <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>
9318       </div>
9319       <div class="date">
9320          4th September 2010
9321       </div>
9322       <div class="body">
9323         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9324 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9325 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9326 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9327 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9328 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9329 installed.</p>
9330
9331 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9332 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9333 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9334 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9335 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9336 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9337 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9338 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9339 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9340
9341 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9342 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9343 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9344 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9345 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9346 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9347 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9348 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9349 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9350 pages they want to visit.</p>
9351
9352 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9353 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9354 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9355 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9356 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9357 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9358 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9359 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9360 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9361 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9362 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9363
9364       </div>
9365       <div class="tags">
9366
9367
9368         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>.
9369
9370
9371       </div>
9372     </div>
9373     <div class="padding"></div>
9374
9375     <div class="entry">
9376       <div class="title">
9377         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
9378       </div>
9379       <div class="date">
9380         27th July 2010
9381       </div>
9382       <div class="body">
9383         <p>I discovered this while doing
9384 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9385 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
9386 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9387 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9388 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
9389
9390 <p>An example is from todays
9391 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9392 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9393 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9394 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9395 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9396 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9397 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
9398
9399 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
9400
9401 <blockquote><pre>
9402 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9403  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
9404   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9405 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9406  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9407 </pre></blockquote>
9408
9409 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
9411 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9412 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9413 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9414 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9415 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9416 of dependency loops.</p>
9417
9418 <p>Thanks to
9419 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9420 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
9421 dependencies
9422 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9423 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
9424
9425 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9426 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
9427 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
9428 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9429 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9430 it.</p>
9431
9432       </div>
9433       <div class="tags">
9434
9435
9436         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>.
9437
9438
9439       </div>
9440     </div>
9441     <div class="padding"></div>
9442
9443     <div class="entry">
9444       <div class="title">
9445         <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>
9446       </div>
9447       <div class="date">
9448         17th July 2010
9449       </div>
9450       <div class="body">
9451         <p>This is a
9452 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
9453 on my
9454 <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
9455 work</a> on
9456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
9457 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
9458
9459 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
9460 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
9461 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
9462 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
9463
9464 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
9465 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
9466 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
9467
9468 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
9469
9470 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
9471 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
9472 the web.
9473
9474 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
9475 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
9476 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
9477 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
9478 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
9479 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
9480
9481 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
9482 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9483 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
9484 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
9485 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
9486 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
9487 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9488 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9489 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9490 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9491 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9492 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
9493 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9494 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9495 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
9496 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
9497
9498 <blockquote><pre>
9499 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9500   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9501   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9502   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9503   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9504   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9505   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9506
9507 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9508   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9509   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
9510   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9511   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9512   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9513 </pre></blockquote>
9514
9515 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9516 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9517 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
9518 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9519 also exist.</p>
9520
9521 <blockquote><pre>
9522 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9523 objectclass: top
9524 objectclass: dnsdomain
9525 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9526 dc: tjener
9527 arecord: 10.0.2.2
9528 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9529
9530 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9531 objectclass: top
9532 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9533 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9534 dc: 2
9535 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9536 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9537 </pre></blockquote>
9538
9539 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
9540 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
9541 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9542 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
9543 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
9544 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
9545 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
9546 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
9547 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
9548 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
9549 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
9550 instead.</p>
9551
9552 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
9553 like this:</p>
9554
9555 <blockquote><pre>
9556 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9557   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9558   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9559   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9560   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9561   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9562
9563 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
9564   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
9565 </pre></blockquote>
9566
9567 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
9568 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
9569 reverse lookups.</p>
9570
9571 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
9572 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
9573 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
9574 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
9575
9576 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
9577 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
9578 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
9579
9580 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
9581 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
9582 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
9583 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
9584 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
9585
9586 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
9587 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
9588 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
9589 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
9590 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
9591
9592 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
9593 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
9594 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
9595 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
9596 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
9597 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
9598
9599 <blockquote><pre>
9600 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
9601     SUP top
9602     AUXILIARY
9603     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
9604           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
9605           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
9606           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
9607           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
9608     ))
9609 </pre></blockquote>
9610
9611 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
9612 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
9613 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
9614 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
9615 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
9616 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
9617
9618 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
9619
9620 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
9621 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
9622 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
9623 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
9624 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
9625
9626 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
9627 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
9628 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
9629 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
9630
9631 <blockquote><pre>
9632 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
9633 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
9634 </pre></blockquote>
9635
9636 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
9637 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
9638 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
9639 search result is this entry:</p>
9640
9641 <blockquote><pre>
9642 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9643 cn: dhcp
9644 objectClass: top
9645 objectClass: dhcpServer
9646 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9647 </pre></blockquote>
9648
9649 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
9650 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
9651 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
9652 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
9653 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
9654 The search result is this entry:</p>
9655
9656 <blockquote><pre>
9657 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9658 cn: DHCP Config
9659 objectClass: top
9660 objectClass: dhcpService
9661 objectClass: dhcpOptions
9662 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9663 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
9664 dhcpStatements: authoritative
9665 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
9666 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
9667 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
9668 </pre></blockquote>
9669
9670 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
9671 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
9672 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
9673 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
9674 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
9675 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
9676 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
9677 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
9678 related computer objects.</p>
9679
9680 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
9681 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
9682 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
9683 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
9684 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
9685 like:</p>
9686
9687 <blockquote><pre>
9688 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9689 cn: hostname
9690 objectClass: top
9691 objectClass: dhcpHost
9692 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9693 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
9694 </pre></blockquote>
9695
9696 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
9697 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
9698 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
9699 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
9700 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
9701 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
9702 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
9703 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
9704 structural object class.
9705
9706 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
9707
9708 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
9709 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
9710 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
9711 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
9712 in the configuration.</p>
9713
9714 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
9715 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
9716 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
9717 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
9718 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
9719 structure.</p>
9720
9721 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
9722 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
9723
9724 <blockquote><pre>
9725 ou=services
9726   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
9727     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
9728     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9729       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9730         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9731     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
9732       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
9733         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
9734     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
9735       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
9736 </pre></blockquote>
9737
9738 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
9739 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
9740 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
9741 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
9742
9743 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
9744 like this:</p>
9745
9746 <blockquote><pre>
9747 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9748 dc: hostname
9749 objectClass: top
9750 objectClass: dhcpHost
9751 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9752 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
9753 associateddomain: hostname.intern
9754 arecord: 10.11.12.13
9755 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9756 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
9757 </pre></blockquote>
9758
9759 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
9760 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
9761 auxiliary object class.</p>
9762
9763       </div>
9764       <div class="tags">
9765
9766
9767         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>.
9768
9769
9770       </div>
9771     </div>
9772     <div class="padding"></div>
9773
9774     <div class="entry">
9775       <div class="title">
9776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
9777       </div>
9778       <div class="date">
9779         14th July 2010
9780       </div>
9781       <div class="body">
9782         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
9783 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
9784 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
9785 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
9786 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
9787
9788 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
9789 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
9790
9791 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
9792 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
9793 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
9794 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
9795 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
9796 to a slave DNS server.</p>
9797
9798 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
9799 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
9800 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
9801 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
9802 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
9803 seem to work.</p>
9804
9805 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
9806 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
9807 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
9808 this:</p>
9809
9810 <blockquote><pre>
9811   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9812   cn: hostname
9813   objectClass: dhcphost
9814   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9815   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
9816   associateddomain: hostname.intern
9817   arecord: 10.11.12.13
9818   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
9819   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
9820   ldapconfigsound: Y
9821 </pre></blockquote>
9822
9823 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
9824 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
9825 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
9826 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
9827
9828 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
9829 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
9830 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
9831 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
9832 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
9833 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
9834 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
9835 might be a good place to put it.</p>
9836
9837 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9838 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9839
9840       </div>
9841       <div class="tags">
9842
9843
9844         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>.
9845
9846
9847       </div>
9848     </div>
9849     <div class="padding"></div>
9850
9851     <div class="entry">
9852       <div class="title">
9853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
9854       </div>
9855       <div class="date">
9856         11th July 2010
9857       </div>
9858       <div class="body">
9859         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
9860 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
9861 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
9862 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
9863
9864 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
9865 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
9866 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
9867 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
9868 LTSP clients.</p>
9869
9870 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
9871 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
9872 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
9873
9874 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
9875 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
9876 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
9877
9878 <blockquote><pre>
9879 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
9880 #
9881 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
9882 #
9883 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
9884 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
9885 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
9886 #
9887 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
9888 # existence of attribute names.
9889 #
9890 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
9891 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
9892 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
9893 #
9894 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
9895 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
9896 #
9897 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
9898 #     SUP top
9899 #     AUXILIARY
9900 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
9901
9902 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
9903 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
9904     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
9905     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
9906         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
9907         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
9908             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
9909             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
9910             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
9911             # bass value on to clients
9912             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
9913         done
9914     done
9915 fi
9916 </pre></blockquote>
9917
9918 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
9919 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
9920 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
9921 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
9922 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
9923
9924 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
9925 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9926
9927 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
9928 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
9929 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
9930 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
9931 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
9932 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
9933
9934       </div>
9935       <div class="tags">
9936
9937
9938         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>.
9939
9940
9941       </div>
9942     </div>
9943     <div class="padding"></div>
9944
9945     <div class="entry">
9946       <div class="title">
9947         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
9948       </div>
9949       <div class="date">
9950          9th July 2010
9951       </div>
9952       <div class="body">
9953         <p>Since
9954 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
9955 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
9956 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
9957 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
9958 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
9959 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
9960 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
9961 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
9962 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
9963 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
9964 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
9965 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
9966 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
9967
9968       </div>
9969       <div class="tags">
9970
9971
9972         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>.
9973
9974
9975       </div>
9976     </div>
9977     <div class="padding"></div>
9978
9979     <div class="entry">
9980       <div class="title">
9981         <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>
9982       </div>
9983       <div class="date">
9984          3rd July 2010
9985       </div>
9986       <div class="body">
9987         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
9988 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
9989 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
9990 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
9991 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
9992 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
9993 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
9994 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
9995
9996 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
9997 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
9998 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
9999 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10000 publish the difference.</p>
10001
10002 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10003
10004 <blockquote><p>
10005   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10006   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10007   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10008   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10009   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10010   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10011   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10012   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10013 </p></blockquote>
10014
10015 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10016
10017 <blockquote><p>
10018   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10019   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10020   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10021   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10022   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10023   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10024   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10025   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10026   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10027   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10028   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10029   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10030   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10031   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10032   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10033   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10034   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10035   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10036   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10037   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10038 </p></blockquote>
10039
10040 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10041
10042 <blockquote><p>
10043   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10044   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10045   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10046   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10047   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10048   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10049   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10050   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10051   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10052   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10053   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10054   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10055   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10056   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10057   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10058   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10059   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10060   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10061   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10062   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10063   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10064 </p></blockquote>
10065
10066 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10067
10068 <blockquote><p>
10069   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10070   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10071   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10072 </p></blockquote>
10073
10074 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10075 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10076 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10077 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10078 the difference somewhat.
10079
10080       </div>
10081       <div class="tags">
10082
10083
10084         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>.
10085
10086
10087       </div>
10088     </div>
10089     <div class="padding"></div>
10090
10091     <div class="entry">
10092       <div class="title">
10093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
10094       </div>
10095       <div class="date">
10096         28th June 2010
10097       </div>
10098       <div class="body">
10099         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10100 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10101 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
10102 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10103 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
10104 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10105 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
10106 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10107 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
10108 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
10109
10110 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10111 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10112 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10113 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10114 released.</p>
10115
10116 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
10117 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10118 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
10119 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
10120
10121 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10122 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10123
10124 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10125 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
10126 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10127 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
10128 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
10129
10130       </div>
10131       <div class="tags">
10132
10133
10134         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>.
10135
10136
10137       </div>
10138     </div>
10139     <div class="padding"></div>
10140
10141     <div class="entry">
10142       <div class="title">
10143         <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>
10144       </div>
10145       <div class="date">
10146         24th June 2010
10147       </div>
10148       <div class="body">
10149         <p>A while back, I
10150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10151 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10152 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10153 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
10154
10155 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10156 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10157 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10158 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
10159
10160 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10161 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10162 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10163 Debian Edu.</p>
10164
10165 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10166 the
10167 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10168 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10169 available today from IETF.</p>
10170
10171 <pre>
10172 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
10173 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
10174 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
10175  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10176         NAME 'dhcpHost'
10177         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
10178 -       SUP top
10179 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
10180         MUST cn
10181         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10182         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
10183 </pre>
10184
10185 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10186 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10187 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
10188
10189 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10190 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10191
10192       </div>
10193       <div class="tags">
10194
10195
10196         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>.
10197
10198
10199       </div>
10200     </div>
10201     <div class="padding"></div>
10202
10203     <div class="entry">
10204       <div class="title">
10205         <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>
10206       </div>
10207       <div class="date">
10208         16th June 2010
10209       </div>
10210       <div class="body">
10211         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10212 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
10213 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10214 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10215 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10216 this:
10217
10218 <blockquote><pre>
10219 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10220 tasksel --new-install
10221 </pre></blockquote>
10222
10223 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10224 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10225 any output what so ever.
10226
10227 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10228 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10229 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10230 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10231 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10232 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
10233 code like this:
10234
10235 <blockquote><pre>
10236 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10237 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
10238 $cmd
10239 </pre></blockquote>
10240
10241 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
10242 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10243 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10244 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10245 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10246 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10247 installation.</p>
10248
10249 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10250 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10251 like this.</p>
10252
10253       </div>
10254       <div class="tags">
10255
10256
10257         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>.
10258
10259
10260       </div>
10261     </div>
10262     <div class="padding"></div>
10263
10264     <div class="entry">
10265       <div class="title">
10266         <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>
10267       </div>
10268       <div class="date">
10269         13th June 2010
10270       </div>
10271       <div class="body">
10272         <p>My
10273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
10274 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10275 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10276 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10277 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10278 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
10279 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10280
10281 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10282 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
10283 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
10284 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
10285 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
10286 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
10287 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
10288 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
10289
10290 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
10291 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
10292 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
10293 too surprising.</p>
10294
10295 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
10296 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
10297 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
10298 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
10299 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
10300 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
10301 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
10302 continue.</p>
10303
10304 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
10305 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
10306   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
10307   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
10308   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
10309   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
10310   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
10311   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10312   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10313   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10314   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10315   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10316   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10317   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10318   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10319   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10320   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10321   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10322   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10323   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10324   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10325   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10326   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10327   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10328   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10329   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10330   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10331   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10332   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
10333   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
10334
10335 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
10336
10337 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
10338   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
10339   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
10340   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
10341   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10342   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
10343   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
10344   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
10345   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
10346   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
10347   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10348   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
10349   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10350   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
10351   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
10352   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
10353   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
10354   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
10355   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
10356   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
10357   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
10358   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
10359   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
10360   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
10361   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10362   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
10363   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
10364   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
10365   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
10366   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10367   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10368   zip</p>
10369
10370 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
10371
10372 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
10373   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
10374   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
10375   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
10376   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
10377   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
10378   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10379   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10380   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
10381   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
10382   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
10383   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
10384   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10385   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10386   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10387   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10388   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10389   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
10390   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
10391   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
10392   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
10393   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
10394   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
10395   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
10396   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
10397   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
10398   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
10399   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
10400
10401 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
10402 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
10403   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10404   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
10405   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
10406   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10407   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
10408   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
10409   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10410   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
10411   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
10412   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
10413   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
10414   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
10415   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
10416   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
10417   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
10418   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10419   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10420   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
10421   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
10422   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10423   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
10424   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
10425   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10426   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10427   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
10428   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
10429   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
10430   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
10431   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
10432   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
10433   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
10434   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
10435   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
10436   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
10437   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
10438   xulrunner-1.9</p>
10439
10440
10441       </div>
10442       <div class="tags">
10443
10444
10445         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>.
10446
10447
10448       </div>
10449     </div>
10450     <div class="padding"></div>
10451
10452     <div class="entry">
10453       <div class="title">
10454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
10455       </div>
10456       <div class="date">
10457         11th June 2010
10458       </div>
10459       <div class="body">
10460         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
10461 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
10462 have been discovered and reported in the process
10463 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
10464 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
10465 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
10466 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
10467 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
10468
10469 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
10470 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
10471 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
10472 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
10473 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
10474 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
10475
10476 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
10477 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
10478 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10479 is created.  The bug report
10480 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
10481 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
10482 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
10483 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
10484 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
10485 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
10486 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
10487 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
10488 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
10489 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
10490 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
10491 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
10492 Debian Squeeze.</p>
10493
10494 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
10495 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
10496 trick:</p>
10497
10498 <blockquote><pre>
10499 #!/bin/sh
10500 set -ex
10501
10502 if [ "$1" ] ; then
10503     desktop=$1
10504 else
10505     desktop=gnome
10506 fi
10507
10508 from=lenny
10509 to=squeeze
10510
10511 exec &lt; /dev/null
10512 unset LANG
10513 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
10514 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
10515 fuser -mv .
10516 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
10517 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10518 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
10519 #!/bin/sh
10520 exit 101
10521 EOF
10522 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
10523 exit_cleanup() {
10524     umount $tmpdir/proc
10525 }
10526 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
10527 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
10528 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
10529
10530 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
10531
10532 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
10533 # to return the correct answers.
10534 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
10535     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
10536
10537 # Include the desktop and laptop task
10538 for test in desktop laptop ; do
10539     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
10540 #!/bin/sh
10541 exit 2
10542 EOF
10543     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
10544 done
10545
10546 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10547 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
10548 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
10549 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
10550
10551 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
10552 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
10553 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
10554 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
10555 fuser -mv
10556 </pre></blockquote>
10557
10558 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
10559 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
10560 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
10561 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
10562 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
10563 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
10564
10565 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
10566 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
10567 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
10568 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
10569 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
10570 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
10571 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
10572
10573 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
10574 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
10575 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
10576 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
10577 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
10578 packages.</p>
10579
10580       </div>
10581       <div class="tags">
10582
10583
10584         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>.
10585
10586
10587       </div>
10588     </div>
10589     <div class="padding"></div>
10590
10591     <div class="entry">
10592       <div class="title">
10593         <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>
10594       </div>
10595       <div class="date">
10596          6th June 2010
10597       </div>
10598       <div class="body">
10599         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
10600 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
10601 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
10602 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
10603 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
10604 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
10605 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
10606
10607 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
10608 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
10609 COLUMNS):</p>
10610
10611 <blockquote><pre>
10612 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
10613 previous=N
10614 PREVLEVEL=
10615 RUNLEVEL=
10616 runlevel=S
10617 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
10618 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
10619 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
10620 </pre></blockquote>
10621
10622 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
10623 script.</p>
10624
10625 <blockquote><pre>
10626 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
10627 previous=N
10628 PREVLEVEL=N
10629 RUNLEVEL=S
10630 runlevel=S
10631 </pre></blockquote>
10632
10633 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
10634 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
10635 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
10636
10637 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
10638 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
10639 choice.</p>
10640
10641       </div>
10642       <div class="tags">
10643
10644
10645         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>.
10646
10647
10648       </div>
10649     </div>
10650     <div class="padding"></div>
10651
10652     <div class="entry">
10653       <div class="title">
10654         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
10655       </div>
10656       <div class="date">
10657          6th June 2010
10658       </div>
10659       <div class="body">
10660         <p>Via the
10661 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
10662 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
10663 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
10664 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
10665 following the standards wars of today.</p>
10666
10667       </div>
10668       <div class="tags">
10669
10670
10671         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>.
10672
10673
10674       </div>
10675     </div>
10676     <div class="padding"></div>
10677
10678     <div class="entry">
10679       <div class="title">
10680         <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>
10681       </div>
10682       <div class="date">
10683          3rd June 2010
10684       </div>
10685       <div class="body">
10686         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
10687 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
10688 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
10689 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
10690 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
10691
10692 <blockquote><pre>
10693 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
10694   vendor                    count
10695   Dell Computer Corporation     1
10696     PowerEdge 1750              1
10697   IBM                           1
10698     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
10699   Intel                         2
10700   [no-dmi-info]                 3
10701 maintainer:~#
10702 </pre></blockquote>
10703
10704 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
10705 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
10706 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
10707 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
10708 option to list the individual machines.</p>
10709
10710 <p>A larger list is
10711 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
10712 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
10713 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
10714 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
10715 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
10716 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
10717 collector.</p>
10718
10719       </div>
10720       <div class="tags">
10721
10722
10723         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>.
10724
10725
10726       </div>
10727     </div>
10728     <div class="padding"></div>
10729
10730     <div class="entry">
10731       <div class="title">
10732         <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>
10733       </div>
10734       <div class="date">
10735          1st June 2010
10736       </div>
10737       <div class="body">
10738         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
10739 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
10740 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
10741 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
10742 wait.</p>
10743
10744 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
10745 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
10746 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
10747 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
10748 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
10749 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
10750
10751 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
10752 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
10753 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
10754 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
10755 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
10756 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
10757 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
10758 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
10759
10760 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
10761
10762       </div>
10763       <div class="tags">
10764
10765
10766         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>.
10767
10768
10769       </div>
10770     </div>
10771     <div class="padding"></div>
10772
10773     <div class="entry">
10774       <div class="title">
10775         <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>
10776       </div>
10777       <div class="date">
10778         27th May 2010
10779       </div>
10780       <div class="body">
10781         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
10782 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
10783 issues are known and should be solved:
10784
10785 <p><ul>
10786
10787 <li>The wicd package seen to
10788 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
10789 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
10790 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
10791 seem to be on the case.</li>
10792
10793 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
10794 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
10795 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
10796 maintainer is on the case.</li>
10797
10798 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
10799 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
10800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
10801 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
10802 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
10803 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
10804 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
10805 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
10806
10807 </ul></p>
10808
10809 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
10810 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
10811 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
10812 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
10813
10814 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10815 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10816 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10817 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10818
10819 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
10820
10821       </div>
10822       <div class="tags">
10823
10824
10825         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>.
10826
10827
10828       </div>
10829     </div>
10830     <div class="padding"></div>
10831
10832     <div class="entry">
10833       <div class="title">
10834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
10835       </div>
10836       <div class="date">
10837         22nd May 2010
10838       </div>
10839       <div class="body">
10840         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
10841 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
10842 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
10843 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
10844
10845 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
10846 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
10847 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
10848 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
10849 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
10850 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
10851 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
10852 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
10853 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
10854 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
10855 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
10856 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
10857 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
10858 going to work.</p>
10859
10860 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
10861 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
10862 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
10863 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
10864 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
10865 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
10866 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
10867 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
10868 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
10869 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
10870 Edu.</p>
10871
10872 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
10873 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
10874 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
10875 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
10876 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
10877 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
10878
10879 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
10880 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
10881
10882       </div>
10883       <div class="tags">
10884
10885
10886         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>.
10887
10888
10889       </div>
10890     </div>
10891     <div class="padding"></div>
10892
10893     <div class="entry">
10894       <div class="title">
10895         <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>
10896       </div>
10897       <div class="date">
10898         14th May 2010
10899       </div>
10900       <div class="body">
10901         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
10902 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
10903 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
10904 expected, if I am to believe the
10905 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
10906 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
10907 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
10908 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
10909 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
10910 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
10911 version.</p>
10912
10913 More information about
10914 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
10915 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
10916 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
10917 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
10918
10919 <blockquote><pre>
10920 CONCURRENCY=none
10921 </pre></blockquote>
10922
10923 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
10924 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
10925 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
10926 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
10927
10928       </div>
10929       <div class="tags">
10930
10931
10932         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>.
10933
10934
10935       </div>
10936     </div>
10937     <div class="padding"></div>
10938
10939     <div class="entry">
10940       <div class="title">
10941         <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>
10942       </div>
10943       <div class="date">
10944         14th May 2010
10945       </div>
10946       <div class="body">
10947         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
10948 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
10949 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
10950 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
10951 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
10952 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
10953 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
10954 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
10955
10956 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
10957 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
10958 this on the collector host:</p>
10959
10960 <blockquote><pre>
10961 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
10962 </pre></blockquote>
10963
10964 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
10965 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
10966
10967 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
10968 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
10969 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
10970 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
10971 written yet.</p>
10972
10973       </div>
10974       <div class="tags">
10975
10976
10977         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>.
10978
10979
10980       </div>
10981     </div>
10982     <div class="padding"></div>
10983
10984     <div class="entry">
10985       <div class="title">
10986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
10987       </div>
10988       <div class="date">
10989         13th May 2010
10990       </div>
10991       <div class="body">
10992         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
10993 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
10994 has been
10995 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
10996
10997 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
10998 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
10999 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
11000 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11001 based boot system.  Tollef is
11002 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
11003 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
11004 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11005 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11006 at the moment do not.</p>
11007
11008 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11009 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11010 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
11011 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11012 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11013 way forward.</p>
11014
11015 <p>In the mean time, based on the
11016 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11017 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11018 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11019 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11020 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
11021 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11022 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11023 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
11024
11025       </div>
11026       <div class="tags">
11027
11028
11029         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>.
11030
11031
11032       </div>
11033     </div>
11034     <div class="padding"></div>
11035
11036     <div class="entry">
11037       <div class="title">
11038         <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>
11039       </div>
11040       <div class="date">
11041          6th May 2010
11042       </div>
11043       <div class="body">
11044         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11045 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11046 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
11047 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11048 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11049 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
11050 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
11051
11052 <blockquote><pre>
11053 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11054 </pre></blockquote>
11055
11056 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11057 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11058 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11059 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
11060 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11061 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11062 make this happen.</p>
11063
11064 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
11065 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11066 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11067 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
11068 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
11069
11070 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11071 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
11072 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
11073 fix the remaining issues.</p>
11074
11075 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11076 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11077 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11078 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11079
11080       </div>
11081       <div class="tags">
11082
11083
11084         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>.
11085
11086
11087       </div>
11088     </div>
11089     <div class="padding"></div>
11090
11091     <div class="entry">
11092       <div class="title">
11093         <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>
11094       </div>
11095       <div class="date">
11096         27th July 2009
11097       </div>
11098       <div class="body">
11099         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
11100 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
11101 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
11102 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
11103 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
11104 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
11105 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
11106
11107 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
11108 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
11109 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
11110
11111       </div>
11112       <div class="tags">
11113
11114
11115         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>.
11116
11117
11118       </div>
11119     </div>
11120     <div class="padding"></div>
11121
11122     <div class="entry">
11123       <div class="title">
11124         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
11125       </div>
11126       <div class="date">
11127         22nd July 2009
11128       </div>
11129       <div class="body">
11130         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
11131 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
11132 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
11133 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
11134 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
11135 the package up to date.</p>
11136
11137 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
11138 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
11139 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
11140 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
11141 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
11142 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
11143 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
11144 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
11145 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
11146 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
11147 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
11148 working on the future release.</p>
11149
11150 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
11151 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
11152
11153       </div>
11154       <div class="tags">
11155
11156
11157         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>.
11158
11159
11160       </div>
11161     </div>
11162     <div class="padding"></div>
11163
11164     <div class="entry">
11165       <div class="title">
11166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
11167       </div>
11168       <div class="date">
11169         24th June 2009
11170       </div>
11171       <div class="body">
11172         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
11173 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
11174 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
11175 funded
11176 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
11177 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
11178 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
11179 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
11180 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
11181 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
11182
11183 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
11184 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
11185 boot:</p>
11186
11187 <ul>
11188
11189 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
11190
11191 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
11192    clock is in UTC.</li>
11193
11194 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
11195    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11196    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
11197
11198 </ul>
11199
11200 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
11201 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
11202 Villegas</a>.
11203
11204 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
11205 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
11206 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
11207 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
11208 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
11209 using this.</p>
11210
11211 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
11212 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
11213 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
11214 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
11215 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
11216 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
11217 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
11218
11219       </div>
11220       <div class="tags">
11221
11222
11223         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>.
11224
11225
11226       </div>
11227     </div>
11228     <div class="padding"></div>
11229
11230     <div class="entry">
11231       <div class="title">
11232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
11233       </div>
11234       <div class="date">
11235         17th May 2009
11236       </div>
11237       <div class="body">
11238         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
11239 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
11240 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
11241 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
11242 dager siden kom
11243 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
11244 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
11245 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
11246 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
11247 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
11248
11249 <blockquote>
11250 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
11251 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
11252 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
11253 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
11254 </blockquote>
11255
11256 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
11257 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
11258 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
11259 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
11260 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
11261
11262 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
11263 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
11264 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
11265
11266       </div>
11267       <div class="tags">
11268
11269
11270         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>.
11271
11272
11273       </div>
11274     </div>
11275     <div class="padding"></div>
11276
11277     <div class="entry">
11278       <div class="title">
11279         <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>
11280       </div>
11281       <div class="date">
11282          7th May 2009
11283       </div>
11284       <div class="body">
11285         <p>Kom over
11286 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
11287 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
11288 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
11289 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
11290 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
11291 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
11292 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
11293
11294       </div>
11295       <div class="tags">
11296
11297
11298         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>.
11299
11300
11301       </div>
11302     </div>
11303     <div class="padding"></div>
11304
11305     <div class="entry">
11306       <div class="title">
11307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
11308       </div>
11309       <div class="date">
11310          2nd May 2009
11311       </div>
11312       <div class="body">
11313         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
11314 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
11315 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
11316 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
11317 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
11318 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
11319 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
11320 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
11321 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
11322 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
11323 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
11324 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
11325 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
11326 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
11327 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
11328 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
11329 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
11330 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
11331 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
11332 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
11333
11334 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
11335 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
11336 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
11337 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
11338 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
11339 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
11340 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
11341 betydelige.</p>
11342
11343       </div>
11344       <div class="tags">
11345
11346
11347         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>.
11348
11349
11350       </div>
11351     </div>
11352     <div class="padding"></div>
11353
11354     <div class="entry">
11355       <div class="title">
11356         <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>
11357       </div>
11358       <div class="date">
11359          2nd May 2009
11360       </div>
11361       <div class="body">
11362         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
11363 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
11364 do not yet know them.</p>
11365
11366 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
11367 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
11368 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
11369 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
11370 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
11371 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
11372 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
11373 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
11374 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
11375 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
11376 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
11377
11378 <p>The second one is
11379 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
11380 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
11381 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
11382 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
11383 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
11384 and the company behind it is running
11385 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
11386 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
11387 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
11388 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
11389 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
11390 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
11391 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
11392 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
11393
11394 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
11395 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
11396 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
11397 surrounded by today.</p>
11398
11399       </div>
11400       <div class="tags">
11401
11402
11403         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>.
11404
11405
11406       </div>
11407     </div>
11408     <div class="padding"></div>
11409
11410     <div class="entry">
11411       <div class="title">
11412         <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>
11413       </div>
11414       <div class="date">
11415         28th April 2009
11416       </div>
11417       <div class="body">
11418         <p>Julien Blache
11419 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
11420 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
11421 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
11422 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
11423 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
11424 properties.</p>
11425
11426       </div>
11427       <div class="tags">
11428
11429
11430         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>.
11431
11432
11433       </div>
11434     </div>
11435     <div class="padding"></div>
11436
11437     <div class="entry">
11438       <div class="title">
11439         <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>
11440       </div>
11441       <div class="date">
11442         30th March 2009
11443       </div>
11444       <div class="body">
11445         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
11446 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
11447 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
11448 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
11449 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
11450 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
11451 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
11452 application.</p>
11453
11454 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
11455 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
11456 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
11457 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
11458 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
11459 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
11460 blocked from doing so.</p>
11461
11462 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
11463 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
11464 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
11465 requirements change.</p>
11466
11467 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
11468 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
11469 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
11470
11471       </div>
11472       <div class="tags">
11473
11474
11475         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>.
11476
11477
11478       </div>
11479     </div>
11480     <div class="padding"></div>
11481
11482     <div class="entry">
11483       <div class="title">
11484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
11485       </div>
11486       <div class="date">
11487         29th March 2009
11488       </div>
11489       <div class="body">
11490         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
11491 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
11492 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
11493 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
11494 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
11495 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
11496 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
11497 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
11498 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
11499 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
11500 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
11501 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
11502 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
11503 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
11504 now. :)</p>
11505
11506       </div>
11507       <div class="tags">
11508
11509
11510         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>.
11511
11512
11513       </div>
11514     </div>
11515     <div class="padding"></div>
11516
11517     <div class="entry">
11518       <div class="title">
11519         <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>
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="date">
11522         29th March 2009
11523       </div>
11524       <div class="body">
11525         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
11526 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
11527 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
11528 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
11529 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
11530 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
11531
11532 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
11533 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
11534 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
11535 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
11536 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
11537 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
11538 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
11539 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
11540 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
11541 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
11542 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
11543 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
11544 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
11545
11546 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
11547 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
11548 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
11549 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
11550
11551 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
11552 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
11553
11554 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
11555 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
11556 new IETF work group?</p>
11557
11558       </div>
11559       <div class="tags">
11560
11561
11562         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>.
11563
11564
11565       </div>
11566     </div>
11567     <div class="padding"></div>
11568
11569     <div class="entry">
11570       <div class="title">
11571         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
11572       </div>
11573       <div class="date">
11574         15th February 2009
11575       </div>
11576       <div class="body">
11577         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
11578 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
11579 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
11580 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
11581 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
11582 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
11583 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
11584 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
11585 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
11586 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
11587 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
11588 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
11589
11590       </div>
11591       <div class="tags">
11592
11593
11594         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>.
11595
11596
11597       </div>
11598     </div>
11599     <div class="padding"></div>
11600
11601     <div class="entry">
11602       <div class="title">
11603         <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>
11604       </div>
11605       <div class="date">
11606          7th December 2008
11607       </div>
11608       <div class="body">
11609         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
11610 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
11611 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
11612 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
11613 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
11614 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
11615 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
11616 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
11617
11618 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
11619 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
11620 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
11621 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
11622 of these cards.</p>
11623
11624       </div>
11625       <div class="tags">
11626
11627
11628         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>.
11629
11630
11631       </div>
11632     </div>
11633     <div class="padding"></div>
11634
11635     <div class="entry">
11636       <div class="title">
11637         <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>
11638       </div>
11639       <div class="date">
11640         25th November 2008
11641       </div>
11642       <div class="body">
11643         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
11644 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
11645 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
11646 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
11647 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
11648 notes are available on
11649 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
11650 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
11651 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
11652 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
11653 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
11654 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
11655 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
11656 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
11657 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
11658
11659 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
11660 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
11661
11662       </div>
11663       <div class="tags">
11664
11665
11666         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>.
11667
11668
11669       </div>
11670     </div>
11671     <div class="padding"></div>
11672
11673     <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>
11674     <div id="sidebar">
11675
11676
11677
11678 <h2>Archive</h2>
11679 <ul>
11680
11681 <li>2016
11682 <ul>
11683
11684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
11685
11686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
11687
11688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11689
11690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
11691
11692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
11693
11694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11695
11696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
11697
11698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
11699
11700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
11701
11702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
11703
11704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
11705
11706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11707
11708 </ul></li>
11709
11710 <li>2015
11711 <ul>
11712
11713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11714
11715 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11716
11717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
11718
11719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
11720
11721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11722
11723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
11724
11725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
11726
11727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
11728
11729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
11730
11731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11732
11733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
11734
11735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11736
11737 </ul></li>
11738
11739 <li>2014
11740 <ul>
11741
11742 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11743
11744 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
11745
11746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
11747
11748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11749
11750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
11751
11752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11753
11754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
11755
11756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
11757
11758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
11759
11760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
11761
11762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11763
11764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
11765
11766 </ul></li>
11767
11768 <li>2013
11769 <ul>
11770
11771 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
11772
11773 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
11774
11775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
11776
11777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
11778
11779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11780
11781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
11782
11783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11784
11785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11786
11787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
11788
11789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
11790
11791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
11792
11793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11794
11795 </ul></li>
11796
11797 <li>2012
11798 <ul>
11799
11800 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
11801
11802 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
11803
11804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
11805
11806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
11807
11808 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
11809
11810 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
11811
11812 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
11813
11814 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11815
11816 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
11817
11818 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
11819
11820 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
11821
11822 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11823
11824 </ul></li>
11825
11826 <li>2011
11827 <ul>
11828
11829 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
11830
11831 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
11832
11833 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
11834
11835 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
11836
11837 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
11838
11839 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
11840
11841 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
11842
11843 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
11844
11845 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
11846
11847 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11848
11849 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11850
11851 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
11852
11853 </ul></li>
11854
11855 <li>2010
11856 <ul>
11857
11858 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
11859
11860 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
11861
11862 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
11863
11864 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
11865
11866 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11867
11868 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
11869
11870 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
11871
11872 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
11873
11874 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
11875
11876 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
11877
11878 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
11879
11880 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
11881
11882 </ul></li>
11883
11884 <li>2009
11885 <ul>
11886
11887 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
11888
11889 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
11890
11891 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
11892
11893 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
11894
11895 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
11896
11897 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
11898
11899 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
11900
11901 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
11902
11903 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
11904
11905 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
11906
11907 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
11908
11909 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
11910
11911 </ul></li>
11912
11913 <li>2008
11914 <ul>
11915
11916 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
11917
11918 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
11919
11920 </ul></li>
11921
11922 </ul>
11923
11924
11925
11926 <h2>Tags</h2>
11927 <ul>
11928
11929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
11930
11931  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
11932
11933  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
11934
11935  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
11936
11937  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
11938
11939  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
11940
11941  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
11942
11943  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
11944
11945  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (142)</a></li>
11946
11947  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
11948
11949  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
11950
11951  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
11952
11953  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
11954
11955  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
11956
11957  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (334)</a></li>
11958
11959  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
11960
11961  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
11962
11963  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
11964
11965  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
11966
11967  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
11968
11969  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
11970
11971  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
11972
11973  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (13)</a></li>
11974
11975  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
11976
11977  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
11978
11979  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
11980
11981  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
11982
11983  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
11984
11985  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
11986
11987  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
11988
11989  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
11990
11991  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (285)</a></li>
11992
11993  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (182)</a></li>
11994
11995  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
11996
11997  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
11998
11999  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
12000
12001  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (96)</a></li>
12002
12003  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
12004
12005  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
12006
12007  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
12008
12009  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
12010
12011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
12012
12013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
12014
12015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
12016
12017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
12018
12019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
12020
12021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
12022
12023  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
12024
12025  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
12026
12027  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
12028
12029  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
12030
12031  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (44)</a></li>
12032
12033  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
12034
12035  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
12036
12037  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
12038
12039  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
12040
12041  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
12042
12043  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
12044
12045 </ul>
12046
12047
12048     </div>
12049     <p style="text-align: right">
12050  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
12051 </p>
12052
12053   </body>
12054 </html>