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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          5th May 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
  32 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
  33 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
  34 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
  35 soon.</p>
  36
  37 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
  38 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
  39 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
  40 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kid code</a> movement, is
  41 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
  42 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
  43 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
  44 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
  45 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
  46 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
  47 Edu.</a>
  48
  49 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
  50 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
  51 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
  52 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
  53 follow.<p>
  54
  55       </div>
  56       <div class="tags">
  57
  58
  59         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>.
  60
  61
  62       </div>
  63     </div>
  64     <div class="padding"></div>
  65
  66     <div class="entry">
  67       <div class="title">
  68         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
  69       </div>
  70       <div class="date">
  71         26th April 2013
  72       </div>
  73       <div class="body">
  74         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
  75 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
  76 announcement:</p>
  77
  78 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
  79 2013-04-26</strong></p>
  80
  81 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
  82 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
  83
  84 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
  85
  86 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
  87 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
  88 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
  89 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
  90 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
  91 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
  92 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
  93 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
  94 installed via the network.</p>
  95
  96 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
  97 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
  98 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
  99
 100 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
 101
 102 <ul>
 103 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
 104   <ul>
 105      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
 106      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
 107          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
 108          manual.)</li>
 109      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
 110      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
 111      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
 112      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
 113      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
 114      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
 115      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
 116      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
 117      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
 118      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
 119      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
 120      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
 121          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
 122          manual</a> for more details.</li>
 123      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
 124          installation.</li>
 125      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
 126          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
 127   </ul></li>
 128 </ul>
 129
 130 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
 131 <ul>
 132 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
 133     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
 134     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
 135 </ul>
 136
 137 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
 138 <ul>
 139 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
 140     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
 141     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
 142 </ul>
 143
 144 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
 145 <ul>
 146 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
 147     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
 148     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
 149 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
 150     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
 151     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
 152 </ul>
 153
 154 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
 155 <ul>
 156 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
 157     yet.</li>
 158 </ul>
 159
 160 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
 161
 162 <ul>
 163 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
 164     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
 165     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
 166 </ul>
 167
 168 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
 169
 170 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
 171 <ul>
 172 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
 173 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
 174 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
 175 </ul>
 176
 177 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
 178
 179 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
 180
 181 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
 182
 183 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
 184
 185       </div>
 186       <div class="tags">
 187
 188
 189         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 190
 191
 192       </div>
 193     </div>
 194     <div class="padding"></div>
 195
 196     <div class="entry">
 197       <div class="title">
 198         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
 199       </div>
 200       <div class="date">
 201         16th April 2013
 202       </div>
 203       <div class="body">
 204         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
 205 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
 206 Details about the gathering can be found
 207 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
 208 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
 209 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
 210 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
 211 weekend.</p>
 212
 213 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
 214 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
 215 Edu release.</p>
 216
 217 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
 218
 219       </div>
 220       <div class="tags">
 221
 222
 223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 224
 225
 226       </div>
 227     </div>
 228     <div class="padding"></div>
 229
 230     <div class="entry">
 231       <div class="title">
 232         <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>
 233       </div>
 234       <div class="date">
 235          3rd April 2013
 236       </div>
 237       <div class="body">
 238         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 239 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 240 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 241 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 242
 243 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 244 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 245 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 246 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 247 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 248 BTS. :)</p>
 249
 250       </div>
 251       <div class="tags">
 252
 253
 254         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>.
 255
 256
 257       </div>
 258     </div>
 259     <div class="padding"></div>
 260
 261     <div class="entry">
 262       <div class="title">
 263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
 264       </div>
 265       <div class="date">
 266         26th March 2013
 267       </div>
 268       <div class="body">
 269         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
 270 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
 271 font you use when printing.</p>
 272
 273 <p>Three years ago,
 274 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
 275 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
 276 changed their default front from
 277 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
 278 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
 279 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
 280 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
 281 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
 282 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
 283 prints.</p>
 284
 285 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
 286 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
 287 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
 288 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
 289 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
 290 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
 291 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
 292 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
 293 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
 294 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
 295 depend on the documents printed.</p>
 296
 297 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
 298 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
 299 and save some money in the process.</p>
 300
 301 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
 302 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
 303 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
 304 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
 305 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
 306 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
 307 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
 308 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
 309 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
 310
 311       </div>
 312       <div class="tags">
 313
 314
 315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 316
 317
 318       </div>
 319     </div>
 320     <div class="padding"></div>
 321
 322     <div class="entry">
 323       <div class="title">
 324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
 325       </div>
 326       <div class="date">
 327         24th March 2013
 328       </div>
 329       <div class="body">
 330         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
 331 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
 332 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
 333 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
 334 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
 335 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
 336 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
 337 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
 338 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
 339 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
 340 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
 341 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
 342
 343 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
 344 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
 345 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
 346 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
 347 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
 348 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
 349 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
 350 all I had to do was to use the
 351 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
 352 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
 353 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
 354 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
 355 xsltproc/fop (aka
 356 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
 357 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
 358 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
 359 technical detail.</p>
 360
 361 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
 362 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
 363 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
 364 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
 365 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
 366 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
 367
 368 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
 369 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
 370 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
 371 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
 372 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
 373 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
 374 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
 375 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
 376 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
 377
 378 <p><blockquote><pre>
 379 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 380 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 381   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
 382     &lt;hr/&gt;
 383   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 384 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 385 </pre></blockquote></p>
 386
 387 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
 388
 389 <p><blockquote><pre>
 390 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 391 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 392   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
 393     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
 394       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
 395     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
 396   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 397 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 398 </pre></blockquote></p>
 399
 400 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
 401 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
 402 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
 403 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
 404 enough.</p>
 405
 406 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
 407 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
 408 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
 409 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
 410 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
 411 look like this:</p>
 412
 413 <p><blockquote><pre>
 414 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 415 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 416   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
 417     &lt;br/&gt;
 418   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 419 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 420 </pre></blockquote></p>
 421
 422 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
 423
 424 <p><blockquote><pre>
 425 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 426 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
 427   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
 428   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
 429     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
 430   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
 431 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 432 </pre></blockquote></p>
 433
 434 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
 435 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
 436 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
 437 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
 438 page.</p>
 439
 440 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
 441 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
 442 github</a>
 443 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
 444 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
 445 days.</p>
 446
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="tags">
 449
 450
 451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 452
 453
 454       </div>
 455     </div>
 456     <div class="padding"></div>
 457
 458     <div class="entry">
 459       <div class="title">
 460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
 461       </div>
 462       <div class="date">
 463         17th March 2013
 464       </div>
 465       <div class="body">
 466         <p>Via
 467 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
 468 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
 469 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
 470 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
 471 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
 472 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
 473 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
 474
 475 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
 476 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
 477
 478 <blockquote>
 479 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
 480 </blockquote>
 481
 482 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
 483
 484 <blockquote>
 485 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
 486 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
 487 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
 488 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
 489 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
 490 </blockquote>
 491
 492 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
 493 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
 494 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
 495 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
 496
 497 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
 498 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
 499
 500 <blockquote>
 501 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
 502 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
 503 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
 504 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
 505 </blockquote>
 506
 507 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
 508 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
 509 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
 510 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
 511 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
 512
 513 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
 514 embedding:</p>
 515
 516 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 517
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="tags">
 520
 521
 522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 523
 524
 525       </div>
 526     </div>
 527     <div class="padding"></div>
 528
 529     <div class="entry">
 530       <div class="title">
 531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="date">
 534          8th March 2013
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="body">
 537         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
 538 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
 539 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
 540 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
 541 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
 542 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
 543 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
 544
 545 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
 546
 547 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
 548 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
 549
 550 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
 551 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
 552 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
 553 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
 554 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
 555 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
 556
 557 <p>Images are available for download at
 558 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
 559
 560 <p>md5sums:
 561 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 562 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 563 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
 564
 565 <p>sha1sums:
 566 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
 567 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
 568 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
 569
 570 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
 571
 572 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
 573 2013-03-03:</p>
 574
 575 <ul>
 576   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
 577   <ul>
 578         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
 579         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
 580   </ul></li>
 581   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
 582   <ul>
 583         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
 584         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
 585   </ul></li>
 586   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
 587      <ul>
 588         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
 589         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
 590         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
 591                 Closes: #664596</li>
 592         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
 593                 Closes: #664976</li>
 594         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
 595            <ul>
 596                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
 597                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
 598            </ul></li>
 599         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
 600            <ul>
 601                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
 602                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
 603                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
 604                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
 605                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
 606            </ul></li>
 607         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
 608     </ul>
 609   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
 610     <ul>
 611         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
 612     </ul></li>
 613 </ul>
 614
 615 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
 616 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
 617 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
 618 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
 619
 620 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
 621 mailinglist
 622 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
 623 </p></blockquote>
 624
 625 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
 626
 627       </div>
 628       <div class="tags">
 629
 630
 631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 632
 633
 634       </div>
 635     </div>
 636     <div class="padding"></div>
 637
 638     <div class="entry">
 639       <div class="title">
 640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
 641       </div>
 642       <div class="date">
 643          3rd March 2013
 644       </div>
 645       <div class="body">
 646         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
 647 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
 648 support using
 649 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
 650 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
 651 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
 652 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
 653 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
 654 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
 655 using the GNU LGPL, and
 656 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
 657
 658 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
 659 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
 660 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
 661 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
 662 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
 663 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
 664
 665 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
 666 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
 667 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
 668 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
 669 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
 670 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
 671 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
 672 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
 673 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
 674 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
 675 signal distribution is handled using
 676 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
 677 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
 678 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
 679 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
 680 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
 681 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
 682 them up a bit more first.</p>
 683
 684 <p>The development is coordinated on the
 685 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
 686 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
 687 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
 688 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
 689 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
 690 development.</p>
 691
 692       </div>
 693       <div class="tags">
 694
 695
 696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
 697
 698
 699       </div>
 700     </div>
 701     <div class="padding"></div>
 702
 703     <div class="entry">
 704       <div class="title">
 705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
 706       </div>
 707       <div class="date">
 708         27th February 2013
 709       </div>
 710       <div class="body">
 711         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
 712 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
 713 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
 714 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
 715 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
 716 (where I am the chair of the board) and
 717 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
 718 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
 719 GNU», with this description:
 720
 721 <p><blockquote>
 722 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
 723 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
 724 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
 725 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
 726 </blockquote></p>
 727
 728 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
 729 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
 730 am really curious how many will show up.  See
 731 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
 732 page</a> for the location details.</p>
 733
 734       </div>
 735       <div class="tags">
 736
 737
 738         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 739
 740
 741       </div>
 742     </div>
 743     <div class="padding"></div>
 744
 745     <div class="entry">
 746       <div class="title">
 747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
 748       </div>
 749       <div class="date">
 750         15th February 2013
 751       </div>
 752       <div class="body">
 753         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
 754 now a great source of free maps available from
 755 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
 756 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
 757 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
 758 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
 759 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
 760 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
 761 page for descriptions).</p>
 762
 763 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
 764 map you can just edit the
 765 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
 766 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
 767
 768       </div>
 769       <div class="tags">
 770
 771
 772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
 773
 774
 775       </div>
 776     </div>
 777     <div class="padding"></div>
 778
 779     <div class="entry">
 780       <div class="title">
 781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
 782       </div>
 783       <div class="date">
 784         12th February 2013
 785       </div>
 786       <div class="body">
 787         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
 788 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
 789 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
 790 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
 791 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
 792 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
 793 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
 794 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
 795 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
 796 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
 797 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
 798 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
 799 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
 800 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
 801 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
 802 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
 803
 804 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
 805 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
 806 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
 807 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
 808 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
 809 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
 810 fields:</p>
 811
 812 <p><pre>
 813 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 814 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 815 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
 816 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 817 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 818 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 819 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 820 </pre></p>
 821
 822 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
 823 answer regarding
 824 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
 825 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
 826 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
 827 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
 828
 829 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
 830
 831 <p><pre>
 832 BEGIN:VCARD
 833 VERSION:2.1
 834 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
 835 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
 836 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
 837 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
 838 REV:20130212T095000Z
 839 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
 840 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
 841 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
 842 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
 843 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
 844 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
 845 END:VCARD
 846 </pre></p>
 847
 848 <p>The resulting QR code created using
 849 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
 850 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
 851 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
 852 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
 853 system.</p>
 854
 855 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
 856
 857 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
 858 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
 859 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
 860 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
 861
 862 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
 863 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
 864
 865       </div>
 866       <div class="tags">
 867
 868
 869         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
 870
 871
 872       </div>
 873     </div>
 874     <div class="padding"></div>
 875
 876     <div class="entry">
 877       <div class="title">
 878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
 879       </div>
 880       <div class="date">
 881         10th February 2013
 882       </div>
 883       <div class="body">
 884         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
 885
 886 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
 887 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
 888 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
 889 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
 890 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
 891 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
 892 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
 893 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
 894 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
 895 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
 896 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
 897
 898 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
 899 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
 900 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
 901 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
 902 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
 903 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
 904 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
 905 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
 906 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
 907 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
 908 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
 909 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
 910 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
 911 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
 912 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
 913 ones own
 914 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
 915 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
 916 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
 917 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
 918 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
 919 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
 920 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
 921 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
 922 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
 923 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
 924 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
 925
 926 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
 927 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
 928 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
 929 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
 930 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
 931 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
 932
 933 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
 934 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
 935 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
 936
 937       </div>
 938       <div class="tags">
 939
 940
 941         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 942
 943
 944       </div>
 945     </div>
 946     <div class="padding"></div>
 947
 948     <div class="entry">
 949       <div class="title">
 950         <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>
 951       </div>
 952       <div class="date">
 953          2nd February 2013
 954       </div>
 955       <div class="body">
 956         <p>My
 957 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 958 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 959 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 960 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 961 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 962 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 963 version too.</p>
 964
 965 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 966 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 967 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 968 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 969 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 970 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 971 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 972 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 973
 974 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 975 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 976 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 977 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 978 it. :)</p>
 979
 980 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 981 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 982 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 983
 984       </div>
 985       <div class="tags">
 986
 987
 988         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>.
 989
 990
 991       </div>
 992     </div>
 993     <div class="padding"></div>
 994
 995     <div class="entry">
 996       <div class="title">
 997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 998       </div>
 999       <div class="date">
1000         22nd January 2013
1001       </div>
1002       <div class="body">
1003         <p>Yesterday, I
1004 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
1005 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
1006 pluggable hardware devices, which I
1007 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
1008 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
1009 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
1010 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
1011 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
1012 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
1013 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
1014 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
1015 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
1016 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
1017
1018 <pre>
1019 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
1020 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
1021 </pre>
1022
1023 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
1024 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
1025 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
1026 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
1027
1028 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
1029 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
1030 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
1031 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
1032 word.</p>
1033
1034 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
1035 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
1036 process.</p>
1037
1038 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
1039 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
1040
1041       </div>
1042       <div class="tags">
1043
1044
1045         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>.
1046
1047
1048       </div>
1049     </div>
1050     <div class="padding"></div>
1051
1052     <div class="entry">
1053       <div class="title">
1054         <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>
1055       </div>
1056       <div class="date">
1057         21st January 2013
1058       </div>
1059       <div class="body">
1060         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
1061 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
1062 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
1063 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
1064 it, fetch the
1065 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
1066 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
1067 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
1068 autostart script.</p>
1069
1070 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1071
1072 <ul>
1073
1074 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1075 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1076
1077 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1078 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1079 initially did.</li>
1080
1081 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1082 the APT database, a database
1083 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1084 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1085
1086 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1087 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1088 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1089 package or packages.</li>
1090
1091 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1092 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1093
1094 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1095 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1096
1097 </ul>
1098
1099 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1100 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1101 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1102 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1103
1104 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1105 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1106 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1107 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1108 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1109
1110 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1111 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1112 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1113 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1114 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1115 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1116 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1117 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1118
1119 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1120 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1121 '<tt>svn checkout
1122 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1123 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
1124 devscripts package.</p>
1125
1126 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1127 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1128 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1129 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1130 instructions</a> for details.</p>
1131
1132       </div>
1133       <div class="tags">
1134
1135
1136         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>.
1137
1138
1139       </div>
1140     </div>
1141     <div class="padding"></div>
1142
1143     <div class="entry">
1144       <div class="title">
1145         <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>
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="date">
1148         19th January 2013
1149       </div>
1150       <div class="body">
1151         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1152 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1153 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1154 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1155 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1156 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1157 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1158 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1159 not a durable solution.
1160
1161 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1162 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
1163
1164 <ul>
1165
1166 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1167   than A4).</li>
1168 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1169 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1170 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
1171 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1172 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1173 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1174 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1175 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1176 size).</li>
1177 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1178   X.org packages.</li>
1179 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1180   the time).
1181
1182 </ul>
1183
1184 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1185 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1186 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1187 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1188 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1189 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1190 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1191 still be useful.</p>
1192
1193 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1194 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1195 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1196 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1197 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1198 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1199
1200       </div>
1201       <div class="tags">
1202
1203
1204         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>.
1205
1206
1207       </div>
1208     </div>
1209     <div class="padding"></div>
1210
1211     <div class="entry">
1212       <div class="title">
1213         <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>
1214       </div>
1215       <div class="date">
1216         18th January 2013
1217       </div>
1218       <div class="body">
1219         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1220 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1221 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1222 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1223 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1224 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1225 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1226
1227 <pre>
1228 #!/usr/bin/python
1229 import sys
1230 import apt
1231 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1232     cache = apt.Cache()
1233     cache.open(None)
1234     thepkgs = []
1235     for pkg in cache:
1236         version = pkg.candidate
1237         if version is None:
1238             version = pkg.installed
1239         if version is None:
1240             continue
1241         record = version.record
1242         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1243             continue
1244         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1245         for t in mime_types:
1246             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1247             if t == mimetype:
1248                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1249     return thepkgs
1250 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1251 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1252     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1253 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1254 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1255     print "  %s" %pkg
1256 </pre>
1257
1258 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1259
1260 <pre>
1261 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1262 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1263   gecko-mediaplayer
1264 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1265 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1266   browser-plugin-gnash
1267 %
1268 </pre>
1269
1270 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1271 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1272 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1273 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1274
1275 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1276 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1277 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1278 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1279 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1280 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1281
1282       </div>
1283       <div class="tags">
1284
1285
1286         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>.
1287
1288
1289       </div>
1290     </div>
1291     <div class="padding"></div>
1292
1293     <div class="entry">
1294       <div class="title">
1295         <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>
1296       </div>
1297       <div class="date">
1298         16th January 2013
1299       </div>
1300       <div class="body">
1301         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1302 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1303 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1304 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1305 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1306 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1307 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1308 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1309
1310 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1311 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1312 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1313 can be found on the
1314 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1315 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1316 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1317 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1318 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1319
1320 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1321
1322 <pre>
1323   count MIME type
1324   ----- -----------------------
1325      32 text/plain
1326      30 audio/mpeg
1327      29 image/png
1328      28 image/jpeg
1329      27 application/ogg
1330      26 audio/x-mp3
1331      25 image/tiff
1332      25 image/gif
1333      22 image/bmp
1334      22 audio/x-wav
1335      20 audio/x-flac
1336      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1337      18 video/x-ms-asf
1338      18 audio/x-musepack
1339      18 audio/x-mpeg
1340      18 application/x-ogg
1341      17 video/mpeg
1342      17 audio/x-scpls
1343      17 audio/ogg
1344      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1345 </pre>
1346
1347 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1348
1349 <pre>
1350   count MIME type
1351   ----- -----------------------
1352      33 text/plain
1353      32 image/png
1354      32 image/jpeg
1355      29 audio/mpeg
1356      27 image/gif
1357      26 image/tiff
1358      26 application/ogg
1359      25 audio/x-mp3
1360      22 image/bmp
1361      21 audio/x-wav
1362      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1363      19 audio/x-mpeg
1364      18 video/mpeg
1365      18 audio/x-scpls
1366      18 audio/x-flac
1367      18 application/x-ogg
1368      17 video/x-ms-asf
1369      17 text/html
1370      17 audio/x-musepack
1371      16 image/x-xbitmap
1372 </pre>
1373
1374 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1375
1376 <pre>
1377   count MIME type
1378   ----- -----------------------
1379      31 text/plain
1380      31 image/png
1381      31 image/jpeg
1382      29 audio/mpeg
1383      28 application/ogg
1384      27 image/gif
1385      26 image/tiff
1386      26 audio/x-mp3
1387      23 audio/x-wav
1388      22 image/bmp
1389      21 audio/x-flac
1390      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1391      19 audio/x-mpeg
1392      18 video/x-ms-asf
1393      18 video/mpeg
1394      18 audio/x-scpls
1395      18 application/x-ogg
1396      17 audio/x-musepack
1397      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1398      16 video/x-msvideo
1399 </pre>
1400
1401 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1402 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1403 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1404 issues.</p>
1405
1406 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1407 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1408
1409       </div>
1410       <div class="tags">
1411
1412
1413         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>.
1414
1415
1416       </div>
1417     </div>
1418     <div class="padding"></div>
1419
1420     <div class="entry">
1421       <div class="title">
1422         <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>
1423       </div>
1424       <div class="date">
1425         15th January 2013
1426       </div>
1427       <div class="body">
1428         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1429 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1430 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1431 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1432 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1433 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1434 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1435 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1436 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1437 packages.</p>
1438
1439 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1440 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1441 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1442 modalias.</p>
1443
1444 <p><blockquote>
1445 Package: package-name
1446 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1447 </blockquote></p>
1448
1449 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1450 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1451
1452 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1453 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1454
1455 <p><blockquote>
1456 Package: cheese
1457 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1458 </blockquote></p>
1459
1460 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1461 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1462
1463 <p><blockquote>
1464 Package: pcmciautils
1465 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1466 </blockquote></p>
1467
1468 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1469 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1470
1471 <p><blockquote>
1472 Package: colorhug-client
1473 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1474 </blockquote></p>
1475
1476 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1477 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1478 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1479
1480 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1481 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1482 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1483 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1484 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1485 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1486 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1487 Raring.</p>
1488
1489 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1490 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1491 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1492 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1493 try the
1494 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1495 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1496 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1497 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1498
1499 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1500 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1501
1502 <p><blockquote>
1503 % ./hw-support-lookup
1504 <br>yubikey-personalization
1505 <br>%
1506 </blockquote></p>
1507
1508 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1509 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1510
1511 <p><blockquote>
1512 % ./hw-support-lookup
1513 <br>pcmciautils
1514 <br>%
1515 </blockquote></p>
1516
1517 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1518 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1519 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1520
1521 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1522 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1523 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1524 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1525 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1526 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1527 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1528 see if it work.</p>
1529
1530 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1531 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1532 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1533 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1534
1535       </div>
1536       <div class="tags">
1537
1538
1539         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>.
1540
1541
1542       </div>
1543     </div>
1544     <div class="padding"></div>
1545
1546     <div class="entry">
1547       <div class="title">
1548         <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>
1549       </div>
1550       <div class="date">
1551         14th January 2013
1552       </div>
1553       <div class="body">
1554         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1555 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1556 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1557 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1558 in
1559 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1560 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1561
1562 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1563
1564 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1565 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1566 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1567 &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;,
1568 &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
1569 &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;.
1570
1571 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1572 this shell script:</p>
1573
1574 <pre>
1575 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1576 </pre>
1577
1578 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1579 using modinfo:</p>
1580
1581 <pre>
1582 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1583 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1584 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1585 %
1586 </pre>
1587
1588 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1589
1590 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1591 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1592
1593 <p><blockquote>
1594 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1595 </blockquote></p>
1596
1597 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1598
1599 <pre>
1600  v   00008086  (vendor)
1601  d   00002770  (device)
1602  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1603  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1604  bc  06        (bus class)
1605  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1606  i   00        (interface)
1607 </pre>
1608
1609 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1610 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1611 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1612 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1613
1614 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1615 means.</p>
1616
1617 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1618
1619 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1620 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1621
1622 <p><blockquote>
1623 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1624 </blockquote></p>
1625
1626 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1627
1628 <pre>
1629  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1630  p    0001  (device product)
1631  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1632  dc     09  (device class)
1633  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1634  dp     00  (device protocol)
1635  ic     09  (interface class)
1636  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1637  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1638 </pre>
1639
1640 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1641 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1642 these alias entries show up:</p>
1643
1644 <p><blockquote>
1645 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1646 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1647 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1648 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1649 </blockquote></p>
1650
1651 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1652 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1653 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1654
1655 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1656
1657 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1658 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1659
1660 <p><blockquote>
1661 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1662 </blockquote></p>
1663
1664 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1665
1666 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1667
1668 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1669 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1670 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1671
1672 <p><blockquote>
1673 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1674 </blockquote></p>
1675
1676 <p>The values present are</p>
1677
1678 <pre>
1679  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1680  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1681  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1682  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1683  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1684  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1685  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1686  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1687  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1688  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1689  ct   10             (chassis type)
1690  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1691 </pre>
1692
1693 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1694 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1695
1696 <pre>
1697   3 Desktop
1698   4 Low Profile Desktop
1699   5 Pizza Box
1700   6 Mini Tower
1701   7 Tower
1702   8 Portable
1703   9 Laptop
1704  10 Notebook
1705  11 Hand Held
1706  12 Docking Station
1707  13 All In One
1708  14 Sub Notebook
1709  15 Space-saving
1710  16 Lunch Box
1711  17 Main Server Chassis
1712  18 Expansion Chassis
1713  19 Sub Chassis
1714  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1715  21 Peripheral Chassis
1716  22 RAID Chassis
1717  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1718  24 Sealed-case PC
1719  25 Multi-system
1720  26 CompactPCI
1721  27 AdvancedTCA
1722  28 Blade
1723  29 Blade Enclosing
1724 </pre>
1725
1726 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1727 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1728 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1729
1730 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1731
1732 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1733 test machine:</p>
1734
1735 <p><blockquote>
1736 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1737 </blockquote></p>
1738
1739 <p>The values present are</p>
1740
1741 <pre>
1742   ty  01  (type)
1743   pr  00  (prototype)
1744   id  00  (id)
1745   ex  00  (extra)
1746 </pre>
1747
1748 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1749 the valid values are.</p>
1750
1751 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1752
1753 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1754 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1755 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1756 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1757 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1758 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1759 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1760
1761 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1762
1763 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1764 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1765
1766 <pre>
1767   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1768     echo "$id" ; \
1769     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1770   done
1771 </pre>
1772
1773 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1774 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1775
1776 <pre>
1777   acpi:ACPI0003:
1778     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1779   acpi:device:
1780   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1781   acpi:IBM0068:
1782     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1783     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1784     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1785     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1786   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1787     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1788     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1789     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1790   [...]
1791 </pre>
1792
1793 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1794 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1795 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1796 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1797
1798 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1799 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1800 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1801
1802       </div>
1803       <div class="tags">
1804
1805
1806         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>.
1807
1808
1809       </div>
1810     </div>
1811     <div class="padding"></div>
1812
1813     <div class="entry">
1814       <div class="title">
1815         <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>
1816       </div>
1817       <div class="date">
1818         10th January 2013
1819       </div>
1820       <div class="body">
1821         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1822 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1823 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1824 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1825 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1826 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1827 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1828 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1829 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1830 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1831 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1832 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1833 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1834 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1835 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1836 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1837 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1838 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1839
1840       </div>
1841       <div class="tags">
1842
1843
1844         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>.
1845
1846
1847       </div>
1848     </div>
1849     <div class="padding"></div>
1850
1851     <div class="entry">
1852       <div class="title">
1853         <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>
1854       </div>
1855       <div class="date">
1856          9th January 2013
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="body">
1859         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1860 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1861 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1862 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1863 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1864 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1865 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1866 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1867 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1868 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1869 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1870
1871 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1872 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1873 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1874 simple:
1875
1876 <ul>
1877
1878 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1879   starting when a user log in.</li>
1880
1881 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1882   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1883
1884 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1885   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1886   packages.</li>
1887
1888 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1889   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1890
1891 </ul>
1892
1893 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1894 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1895 discover database to find packages and
1896 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1897 packages.</p>
1898
1899 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1900 draft package is now checked into
1901 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1902 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1903 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1904 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1905 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1906 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1907 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1908 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1909 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1910 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1911 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1912 because of the freeze).</p>
1913
1914 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1915 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1916 inserted):</p>
1917
1918 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1919
1920 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1921 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1922 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1923
1924 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1925 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1926 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1927 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1928 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1929 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1930 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1931
1932 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1933 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1934 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1935 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1936 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1937 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1938 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1939 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1940 not be installed?</p>
1941
1942 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1943 please send me an email. :)</p>
1944
1945       </div>
1946       <div class="tags">
1947
1948
1949         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>.
1950
1951
1952       </div>
1953     </div>
1954     <div class="padding"></div>
1955
1956     <div class="entry">
1957       <div class="title">
1958         <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>
1959       </div>
1960       <div class="date">
1961          2nd January 2013
1962       </div>
1963       <div class="body">
1964         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1965 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1966 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1967 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1968 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1969 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1970 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1971 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1972 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1973 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1974
1975 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1976 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1977 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</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/robot">robot</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/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1993       </div>
1994       <div class="date">
1995         28th December 2012
1996       </div>
1997       <div class="body">
1998         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1999 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
2000 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
2001 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
2002 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
2003 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
2004 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
2005 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
2006 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
2007 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
2008 followed by many others. :)</p>
2009
2010 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
2011 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
2012 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
2013 you want to donate to the project.</p>
2014
2015       </div>
2016       <div class="tags">
2017
2018
2019         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2020
2021
2022       </div>
2023     </div>
2024     <div class="padding"></div>
2025
2026     <div class="entry">
2027       <div class="title">
2028         <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>
2029       </div>
2030       <div class="date">
2031         25th December 2012
2032       </div>
2033       <div class="body">
2034         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
2035 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
2036
2037 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
2038 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
2039 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
2040 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
2041 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
2042 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
2043 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
2044 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
2045 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
2046 name.</p>
2047
2048 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
2049 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
2050 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
2051
2052 <blockquote><pre>
2053 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
2054 cd bitcoin
2055 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
2056 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
2057 </pre></blockquote>
2058
2059 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
2060 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
2061 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
2062 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
2063 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
2064 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
2065 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
2066 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
2067 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
2068
2069 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2070 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2071 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2072
2073       </div>
2074       <div class="tags">
2075
2076
2077         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>.
2078
2079
2080       </div>
2081     </div>
2082     <div class="padding"></div>
2083
2084     <div class="entry">
2085       <div class="title">
2086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="date">
2089         21st December 2012
2090       </div>
2091       <div class="body">
2092         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
2093 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
2094 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
2095 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
2096 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
2097 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
2098 is now maintained by a
2099 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
2100 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
2101 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
2102 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
2103 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
2104 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2105 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2106 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2107 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2108 Corallo in a
2109 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2110 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2111 Debian package.</p>
2112
2113 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2114 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2115 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2116 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2117 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2118 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2119 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2120 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2121 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2122 new version to unstable.
2123
2124 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2125 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2126 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2127 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2128 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2129 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2130 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2131 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2132 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2133 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2134 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2135 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2136 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2137 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2138 have not tested them.</p>
2139
2140 <p>My
2141 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2142 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2143 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2144 years ago, as can be
2145 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2146 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
2147 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2148 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2149 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2150 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2151 the same address as last time,
2152 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2153
2154       </div>
2155       <div class="tags">
2156
2157
2158         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>.
2159
2160
2161       </div>
2162     </div>
2163     <div class="padding"></div>
2164
2165     <div class="entry">
2166       <div class="title">
2167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
2168       </div>
2169       <div class="date">
2170         18th December 2012
2171       </div>
2172       <div class="body">
2173         <p>A few days ago I came across
2174 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
2175 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
2176 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
2177 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
2178 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
2179 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
2180 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
2181 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
2182 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
2183
2184 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
2185 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
2186 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
2187 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
2188
2189 <blockquote><pre>
2190 2004-05-27 Book Store
2191       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
2192       Liabilities:Visa
2193 </pre></blockquote>
2194
2195 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
2196 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
2197 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
2198 Spang</a>,
2199 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
2200 Keen</a>,
2201 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
2202 Cantino</a> and
2203 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
2204 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
2205 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
2206 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
2207 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
2208
2209 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
2210 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
2211 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
2212 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
2213 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
2214
2215 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
2216 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
2217 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
2218 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
2219 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
2220 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
2221 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
2222 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
2223 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
2224
2225       </div>
2226       <div class="tags">
2227
2228
2229         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2230
2231
2232       </div>
2233     </div>
2234     <div class="padding"></div>
2235
2236     <div class="entry">
2237       <div class="title">
2238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
2239       </div>
2240       <div class="date">
2241          6th December 2012
2242       </div>
2243       <div class="body">
2244         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
2245 Oslo</a>, we use the
2246 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
2247 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
2248 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
2249 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
2250 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
2251 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
2252 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
2253 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
2254 Python.</p>
2255
2256 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
2257 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
2258 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
2259 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
2260 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
2261 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
2262
2263 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
2264 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
2265 user currently logged in:</p>
2266
2267 <blockquote><pre>
2268 #!/usr/bin/env python
2269 import getpass
2270 import xmlrpclib
2271 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
2272 username = getpass.getuser()
2273 password = getpass.getpass()
2274 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
2275 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
2276 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
2277 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
2278 result = server.logout(sessionid)
2279 print result
2280 </pre></blockquote>
2281
2282 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
2283 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
2284
2285       </div>
2286       <div class="tags">
2287
2288
2289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2290
2291
2292       </div>
2293     </div>
2294     <div class="padding"></div>
2295
2296     <div class="entry">
2297       <div class="title">
2298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
2299       </div>
2300       <div class="date">
2301         17th November 2012
2302       </div>
2303       <div class="body">
2304         <p>While working on a
2305 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
2306 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
2307 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
2308 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
2309 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
2310 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
2311
2312 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
2313 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
2314 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
2315 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
2316 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
2317 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
2318 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
2319 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
2320 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
2321 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
2322 arguments.</p>
2323
2324 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
2325 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
2326 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
2327 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
2328 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
2329 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
2330 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
2331 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
2332
2333 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
2334 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
2335 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
2336 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
2337 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
2338 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
2339 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
2340 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
2341 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
2342 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
2343 correct right holder.</p>
2344
2345 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
2346 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
2347 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
2348 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
2349 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
2350 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
2351 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
2352 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
2353 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
2354 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
2355 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
2356 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
2357 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
2358 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
2359
2360 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
2361 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
2362 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
2363
2364 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
2365 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
2366
2367       </div>
2368       <div class="tags">
2369
2370
2371         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2372
2373
2374       </div>
2375     </div>
2376     <div class="padding"></div>
2377
2378     <div class="entry">
2379       <div class="title">
2380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
2381       </div>
2382       <div class="date">
2383         14th November 2012
2384       </div>
2385       <div class="body">
2386         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
2387 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2388 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
2389 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
2390 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
2391 the people behind the German
2392 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
2393 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
2394 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
2395
2396 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2397
2398 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
2399 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
2400 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
2401
2402 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
2403 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
2404 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
2405 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
2406 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
2407 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
2408
2409 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
2410 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
2411 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
2412 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
2413 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
2414 relationship management and the communication processes in the
2415 project.</p>
2416
2417 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
2418 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
2419 and a yoga teacher.</p>
2420
2421 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2422 project?</strong></p>
2423
2424 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
2425
2426 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
2427 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
2428 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
2429 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
2430 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
2431 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
2432 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
2433 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
2434 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
2435 parents.</p>
2436
2437 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
2438 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
2439 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
2440 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
2441 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
2442 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
2443 Germany.</p>
2444
2445 <p>For information about our school project you can read
2446 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
2447 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
2448
2449 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2450 Edu?</strong></p>
2451
2452 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
2453 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
2454
2455 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
2456 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
2457 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
2458 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
2459 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
2460 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
2461 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
2462 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
2463 teachers, parents...</p>
2464
2465 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2466 Edu?</strong></p>
2467
2468 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
2469 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2470
2471 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
2472 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
2473 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
2474 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
2475 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2476
2477 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
2478 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
2479 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
2480 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
2481 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
2482 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
2483 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
2484
2485 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2486
2487 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
2488 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
2489 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
2490 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
2491
2492 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2493 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2494
2495 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
2496 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
2497 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
2498 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
2499 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
2500
2501 <ul>
2502
2503 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
2504 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
2505 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
2506
2507 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
2508 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
2509 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
2510 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
2511 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
2512 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
2513 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
2514
2515 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
2516 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
2517 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
2518 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
2519
2520 </ul>
2521
2522       </div>
2523       <div class="tags">
2524
2525
2526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2527
2528
2529       </div>
2530     </div>
2531     <div class="padding"></div>
2532
2533     <div class="entry">
2534       <div class="title">
2535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
2536       </div>
2537       <div class="date">
2538          4th November 2012
2539       </div>
2540       <div class="body">
2541         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
2542 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
2543 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
2544 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
2545 see how a member of the bitcoin community
2546 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
2547 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
2548 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
2549 competition.  My thoughts go to the
2550 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
2551 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
2552 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
2553 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
2554 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
2555
2556 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
2557 that the community already seem to have
2558 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
2559 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
2560 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
2561 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
2562 wealth is available.</p>
2563
2564       </div>
2565       <div class="tags">
2566
2567
2568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2569
2570
2571       </div>
2572     </div>
2573     <div class="padding"></div>
2574
2575     <div class="entry">
2576       <div class="title">
2577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
2578       </div>
2579       <div class="date">
2580         26th October 2012
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="body">
2583         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
2584 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
2585 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
2586 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
2587 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
2588 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
2589 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
2590 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
2591 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
2592 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
2593 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
2594 it every time.</p>
2595
2596 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
2597 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
2598 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
2599 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
2600 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
2601 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
2602 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
2603 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
2604 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
2605 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
2606 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
2607 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
2608
2609 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
2610 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
2611 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
2612 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
2613 article: First the unplanned outage:
2614
2615 <blockquote><pre>
2616 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
2617 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
2618 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
2619 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
2620 Duration:    40 minutes
2621 Scope:       Exchange 2003
2622 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
2623              a cluster failover.
2624
2625 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
2626              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
2627 Technician:  [xxx]
2628 </pre></blockquote>
2629
2630 Next the planned outage:
2631
2632 <blockquote><pre>
2633 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
2634 Severity:    Major (Planned)
2635 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
2636 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
2637 Duration:    10 hours
2638 Scope:       H2 Transport
2639 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
2640              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
2641              4510s.
2642 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
2643              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
2644              connectivity.
2645 Technician:  [xxx]
2646 </pre></blockquote>
2647
2648 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
2649 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
2650 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
2651 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
2652 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
2653 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
2654 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
2655
2656 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
2657 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
2658 university too.  We do register
2659 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
2660 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
2661 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
2662 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
2663 for other sites to consider too?</p>
2664
2665       </div>
2666       <div class="tags">
2667
2668
2669         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2670
2671
2672       </div>
2673     </div>
2674     <div class="padding"></div>
2675
2676     <div class="entry">
2677       <div class="title">
2678         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
2679       </div>
2680       <div class="date">
2681         22nd October 2012
2682       </div>
2683       <div class="body">
2684         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
2685 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
2686 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
2687 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
2688 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
2689 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
2690 background information is available in Norwegian from
2691 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
2692 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
2693 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
2694 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
2695 willing to
2696 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
2697 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
2698 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
2699 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
2700 sounded like
2701 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
2702 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
2703 later.</p>
2704
2705 <p>And thought this action is
2706 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
2707 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
2708 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
2709 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
2710 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
2711 rights.</p>
2712
2713 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
2714 unacceptable terms.  For example
2715 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
2716 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
2717 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
2718 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
2719 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
2720
2721 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
2722 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
2723 restored the account of the user, as reported by
2724 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
2725 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
2726 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
2727 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
2728 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
2729 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
2730 reading two opinions from
2731 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
2732 Phipps</a> and
2733 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
2734 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
2735 details about the original story.</p>
2736
2737       </div>
2738       <div class="tags">
2739
2740
2741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
2742
2743
2744       </div>
2745     </div>
2746     <div class="padding"></div>
2747
2748     <div class="entry">
2749       <div class="title">
2750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
2751       </div>
2752       <div class="date">
2753         18th October 2012
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="body">
2756         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
2757 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
2758 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
2759 across a marvellous drawing by
2760 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
2761 visualising some of what is going on.
2762
2763 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
2764 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
2765
2766 <blockquote>
2767 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
2768 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
2769 </blockquote>
2770
2771 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
2772 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
2773 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
2774 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
2775 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
2776 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
2777
2778       </div>
2779       <div class="tags">
2780
2781
2782         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2783
2784
2785       </div>
2786     </div>
2787     <div class="padding"></div>
2788
2789     <div class="entry">
2790       <div class="title">
2791         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
2792       </div>
2793       <div class="date">
2794         12th October 2012
2795       </div>
2796       <div class="body">
2797         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
2798 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
2799 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
2800 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
2801 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
2802 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
2803 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
2804 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
2805 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
2806 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
2807 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
2808 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
2809 matter".</p>
2810
2811 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
2812 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
2813 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
2814 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
2815 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
2816 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
2817 to argue its side.</p>
2818
2819 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
2820 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
2821 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
2822 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
2823
2824 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
2825 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
2826 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
2827
2828       </div>
2829       <div class="tags">
2830
2831
2832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
2833
2834
2835       </div>
2836     </div>
2837     <div class="padding"></div>
2838
2839     <div class="entry">
2840       <div class="title">
2841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
2842       </div>
2843       <div class="date">
2844          3rd October 2012
2845       </div>
2846       <div class="body">
2847         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
2848 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
2849 the computer science book collection available in his local
2850 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
2851 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
2852 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
2853 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
2854 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
2855 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
2856 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
2857 recently published books.</p>
2858
2859 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
2860 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
2861 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
2862 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
2863 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
2864 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
2865 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
2866 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
2867 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
2868 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
2869 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
2870 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
2871 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
2872 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
2873 for the library that evening.</p>
2874
2875 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
2876 going to know that for example
2877 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
2878 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
2879 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
2880 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
2881 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
2882 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
2883 book right away.</p>
2884
2885       </div>
2886       <div class="tags">
2887
2888
2889         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2890
2891
2892       </div>
2893     </div>
2894     <div class="padding"></div>
2895
2896     <div class="entry">
2897       <div class="title">
2898         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="date">
2901         23rd September 2012
2902       </div>
2903       <div class="body">
2904         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
2905 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
2906 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2907 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
2908 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
2909 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
2910
2911 When I started, I
2912 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2913 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
2914 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
2915 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
2916 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
2917 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
2918 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
2919
2920 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2921
2922 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
2923 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
2924 the project files currently available from
2925 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2926
2927 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2928 the updated
2929 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2930 and
2931 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2932 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2933 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2934 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2935
2936       </div>
2937       <div class="tags">
2938
2939
2940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2941
2942
2943       </div>
2944     </div>
2945     <div class="padding"></div>
2946
2947     <div class="entry">
2948       <div class="title">
2949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
2950       </div>
2951       <div class="date">
2952         17th September 2012
2953       </div>
2954       <div class="body">
2955         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
2956 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2957 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
2958 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
2959 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
2960 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
2961 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
2962
2963 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2964
2965 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
2966 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
2967 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
2968 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
2969 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
2970 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
2971 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
2972 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
2973 training is anyway very important</p>
2974
2975 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
2976 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
2977 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
2978 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2979 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2980
2981 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2982 project?</strong></p>
2983
2984 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2985 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2986 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
2987 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2988 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2989 hole.</p>
2990
2991 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2992 Edu?</strong></p>
2993
2994 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2995 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
2996 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2997 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
2998 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
2999 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
3000 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
3001 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
3002 hassle.</p>
3003
3004 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3005 Edu?</strong></p>
3006
3007 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
3008 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
3009 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
3010 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
3011 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
3012 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
3013 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
3014 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
3015
3016 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3017
3018 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
3019 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
3020 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
3021 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
3022 has the same...</p>
3023
3024 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
3025 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
3026 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
3027 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
3028
3029 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3030 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3031
3032 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
3033 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
3034 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
3035
3036 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
3037 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
3038 don't.</p>
3039
3040 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
3041 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
3042 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
3043 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
3044 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
3045 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
3046 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
3047
3048       </div>
3049       <div class="tags">
3050
3051
3052         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3053
3054
3055       </div>
3056     </div>
3057     <div class="padding"></div>
3058
3059     <div class="entry">
3060       <div class="title">
3061         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
3062       </div>
3063       <div class="date">
3064         15th September 2012
3065       </div>
3066       <div class="body">
3067         <p>After the
3068 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
3069 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
3070 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
3071 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
3072 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
3073 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
3074 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
3075 was
3076 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
3077 formal working group should be formed.</p>
3078
3079 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
3080 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
3081 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
3082 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
3083 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
3084 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
3085 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
3086 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
3087
3088 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
3089 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
3090 IETF.</p>
3091
3092       </div>
3093       <div class="tags">
3094
3095
3096         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3097
3098
3099       </div>
3100     </div>
3101     <div class="padding"></div>
3102
3103     <div class="entry">
3104       <div class="title">
3105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
3106       </div>
3107       <div class="date">
3108         12th September 2012
3109       </div>
3110       <div class="body">
3111         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
3112 publication of of
3113 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
3114 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
3115 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
3116 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
3117 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
3118 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
3119 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
3120 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
3121 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
3122 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
3123
3124 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
3125 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
3126 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
3127 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
3128
3129 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
3130 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
3131
3132       </div>
3133       <div class="tags">
3134
3135
3136         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3137
3138
3139       </div>
3140     </div>
3141     <div class="padding"></div>
3142
3143     <div class="entry">
3144       <div class="title">
3145         <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>
3146       </div>
3147       <div class="date">
3148          7th September 2012
3149       </div>
3150       <div class="body">
3151         <p>As I
3152 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
3153 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
3154 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
3155 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
3156 repository for the project</a>.</p>
3157
3158 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
3159 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
3160 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
3161 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
3162
3163 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
3164 PostScript formats at
3165 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
3166 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
3167
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="tags">
3170
3171
3172         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>.
3173
3174
3175       </div>
3176     </div>
3177     <div class="padding"></div>
3178
3179     <div class="entry">
3180       <div class="title">
3181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="date">
3184         23rd August 2012
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="body">
3187         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
3188 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
3189 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
3190 revisit the great site
3191 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
3192 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
3193 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
3194
3195       </div>
3196       <div class="tags">
3197
3198
3199         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
3200
3201
3202       </div>
3203     </div>
3204     <div class="padding"></div>
3205
3206     <div class="entry">
3207       <div class="title">
3208         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
3209       </div>
3210       <div class="date">
3211         17th August 2012
3212       </div>
3213       <div class="body">
3214         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
3215 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3216 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3217 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
3218 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
3219 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
3220 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
3221 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
3222 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
3223 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
3224 summer I
3225 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
3226 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
3227 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
3228
3229 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
3230 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
3231 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
3232 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
3233 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
3234 progress:</p>
3235
3236 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
3237
3238 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
3239 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
3240 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
3241 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
3242 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
3243 english version of the docbook source.</p>
3244
3245 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
3246 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
3247 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
3248 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
3249 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
3250 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
3251 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
3252 project files currently available from <a
3253 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3254
3255 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
3256 the updated
3257 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
3258 and
3259 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3260 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
3261 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
3262 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
3263
3264       </div>
3265       <div class="tags">
3266
3267
3268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3269
3270
3271       </div>
3272     </div>
3273     <div class="padding"></div>
3274
3275     <div class="entry">
3276       <div class="title">
3277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
3278       </div>
3279       <div class="date">
3280         10th August 2012
3281       </div>
3282       <div class="body">
3283         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
3284 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
3285 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
3286 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
3287 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
3288 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
3289 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
3290 case for the language
3291 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
3292 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
3293
3294 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
3295 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
3296 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
3297 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
3298 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
3299
3300 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
3301 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
3302 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
3303 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
3304 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
3305 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
3306 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
3307 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
3308 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
3309 alias for 'nb'.</p>
3310
3311 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
3312 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
3313 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
3314 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
3315 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
3316 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
3317 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
3318 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
3319 at the same time. :(</p>
3320
3321 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
3322 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
3323 processors. :(</p>
3324
3325 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
3326
3327       </div>
3328       <div class="tags">
3329
3330
3331         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3332
3333
3334       </div>
3335     </div>
3336     <div class="padding"></div>
3337
3338     <div class="entry">
3339       <div class="title">
3340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
3341       </div>
3342       <div class="date">
3343         31st July 2012
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="body">
3346         <p>I tried to send this text to the
3347 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
3348 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
3349 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
3350 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
3351 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
3352 out.</p>
3353
3354 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
3355 learning curve at the moment.</p>
3356
3357 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
3358 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
3359 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
3360 available from
3361 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
3362 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
3363 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
3364 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
3365 Squeeze.</p>
3366
3367 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
3368 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
3369 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
3370 problems.</p>
3371
3372 <ul>
3373
3374 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
3375    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
3376    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
3377    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
3378    index references spanning several pages (See
3379    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
3380    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
3381    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
3382
3383 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
3384    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
3385    #683163</a>).</li>
3386
3387 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
3388    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
3389    footnote and text body, see
3390    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
3391    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
3392    refs listed are not right).</li>
3393
3394 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
3395
3396 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
3397    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
3398
3399 </ul>
3400
3401 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
3402 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
3403 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
3404
3405 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
3406
3407       </div>
3408       <div class="tags">
3409
3410
3411         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
3412
3413
3414       </div>
3415     </div>
3416     <div class="padding"></div>
3417
3418     <div class="entry">
3419       <div class="title">
3420         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
3421       </div>
3422       <div class="date">
3423         21st July 2012
3424       </div>
3425       <div class="body">
3426         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
3427 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
3428 norwegian version</a> of the book
3429 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
3430 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
3431 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
3432 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
3433 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3434
3435 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
3436 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
3437 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
3438 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
3439 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
3440 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
3441 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
3442 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
3443 print. :)</p>
3444
3445 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
3446 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
3447 language.</p>
3448
3449       </div>
3450       <div class="tags">
3451
3452
3453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3454
3455
3456       </div>
3457     </div>
3458     <div class="padding"></div>
3459
3460     <div class="entry">
3461       <div class="title">
3462         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
3463       </div>
3464       <div class="date">
3465         16th July 2012
3466       </div>
3467       <div class="body">
3468         <p>I am currently working on a
3469 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
3470 to translate</a> the book
3471 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
3472 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
3473 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
3474 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
3475 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
3476 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
3477 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
3478
3479 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
3480 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
3481 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
3482 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
3483 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
3484 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
3485 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
3486 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
3487 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
3488
3489       </div>
3490       <div class="tags">
3491
3492
3493         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3494
3495
3496       </div>
3497     </div>
3498     <div class="padding"></div>
3499
3500     <div class="entry">
3501       <div class="title">
3502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
3503       </div>
3504       <div class="date">
3505          9th July 2012
3506       </div>
3507       <div class="body">
3508         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3509 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
3510 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
3511 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
3512 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
3513 to adjust and scale the just released
3514 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3515 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
3516 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
3517
3518 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3519
3520 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
3521 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
3522 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
3523 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
3524 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
3525 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
3526 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
3527 perspective when working with IT.</p>
3528
3529 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3530 project?</strong></p>
3531
3532 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
3533 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
3534 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
3535 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
3536 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
3537 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
3538
3539 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3540 Edu?</strong></p>
3541
3542 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
3543 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
3544 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
3545 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
3546 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
3547 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
3548 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
3549 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
3550 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
3551 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
3552 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
3553 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
3554 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
3555 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
3556 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
3557 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
3558 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
3559 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
3560 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
3561 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
3562 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
3563 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
3564 quicker to update.
3565
3566 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3567 Edu?</strong></p>
3568
3569 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
3570 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
3571 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
3572 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
3573 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
3574 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
3575
3576 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
3577 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
3578 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
3579 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
3580 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
3581 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
3582 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
3583 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
3584 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
3585 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
3586 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
3587 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
3588 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
3589 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
3590 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
3591
3592 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
3593 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
3594 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
3595 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
3596 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
3597 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
3598 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
3599 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
3600
3601 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
3602 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
3603 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
3604 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
3605 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
3606 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
3607 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
3608 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
3609 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
3610 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
3611 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
3612 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
3613 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
3614 sound file.</p>
3615
3616 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
3617 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
3618 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
3619 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
3620 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
3621 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
3622 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
3623 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
3624 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
3625
3626 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3627
3628 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
3629 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
3630 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
3631 )</p>
3632
3633 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3634 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3635
3636 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
3637 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
3638 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
3639 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
3640 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
3641 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
3642 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
3643 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
3644 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
3645 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
3646 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
3647 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
3648 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
3649 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
3650 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
3651
3652 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
3653 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
3654 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
3655 management with Airtime</a>,
3656 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
3657 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
3658 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
3659 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
3660 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
3661
3662       </div>
3663       <div class="tags">
3664
3665
3666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3667
3668
3669       </div>
3670     </div>
3671     <div class="padding"></div>
3672
3673     <div class="entry">
3674       <div class="title">
3675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
3676       </div>
3677       <div class="date">
3678          8th July 2012
3679       </div>
3680       <div class="body">
3681         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
3682 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
3683 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
3684 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
3685 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
3686 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
3687 Steinberg in his blog post
3688 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
3689 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
3690 spending of your tax money.</p>
3691
3692 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
3693 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
3694 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
3695 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
3696 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
3697 purchases.</p>
3698
3699       </div>
3700       <div class="tags">
3701
3702
3703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3704
3705
3706       </div>
3707     </div>
3708     <div class="padding"></div>
3709
3710     <div class="entry">
3711       <div class="title">
3712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
3713       </div>
3714       <div class="date">
3715          7th July 2012
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="body">
3718         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3719 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
3720 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
3721 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
3722 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
3723 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
3724 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
3725 receive.  The software is
3726
3727 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
3728 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
3729 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
3730 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
3731 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
3732 Windows</a>.</p>
3733
3734 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
3735 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
3736
3737 <p><ul>
3738
3739   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
3740     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
3741
3742   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
3743     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
3744     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
3745     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
3746     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
3747     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
3748     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
3749     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
3750     </li>
3751
3752   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
3753     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
3754
3755   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
3756     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
3757
3758   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
3759     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
3760
3761   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
3762
3763   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
3764     formats </li>
3765
3766   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
3767     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
3768     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
3769     (as separate sets)</li>
3770
3771   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
3772     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
3773     percentage)</li>
3774
3775   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
3776     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
3777     memory):
3778     <ul>
3779       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
3780       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
3781       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
3782       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
3783       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
3784       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
3785       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
3786       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
3787       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
3788       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
3789           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
3790           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
3791           activity)</li>
3792       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
3793       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
3794     </ul></li>
3795
3796   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
3797     <ul>
3798       <li>Break periods</li>
3799       <li>For teacher(s):
3800         <ul>
3801           <li>Not available periods</li>
3802           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
3803           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3804           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3805           <li>Min hours daily</li>
3806           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3807
3808           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3809             days per week</li>
3810         </ul></li>
3811       <li>For students (sets):
3812         <ul>
3813           <li>Not available periods</li>
3814           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
3815           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
3816           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
3817           <li>Min hours daily</li>
3818           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
3819
3820           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
3821             days per week</li>
3822         </ul></li>
3823       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
3824         <ul>
3825           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
3826           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
3827           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
3828           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
3829           <li>End(s) students day</li>
3830           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
3831           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
3832             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
3833           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
3834           <li>Not overlapping</li>
3835           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
3836           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
3837         </ul></li>
3838     </ul></li>
3839
3840   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
3841     <ul>
3842       <li>Room not available periods</li>
3843       <li>For teacher(s):
3844         <ul>
3845           <li>Home room(s)</li>
3846           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3847           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3848         </ul>
3849       </li>
3850
3851       <li>For students (sets):
3852         <ul>
3853           <li>Home room(s)</li>
3854           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
3855           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
3856         </ul>
3857       </li>
3858       <li>Preferred room(s):
3859         <ul>
3860           <li>For a subject</li>
3861           <li>For an activity tag</li>
3862           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
3863           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
3864         </ul>
3865       </li>
3866
3867       <li>For a set of activities:
3868         <ul>
3869           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
3870         </ul>
3871       </li>
3872     </ul>
3873   </li>
3874 </ul></p>
3875
3876 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
3877 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
3878 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
3879 manually, check it out.
3880
3881 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
3882 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
3883 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
3884 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
3885 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
3886 section</a>.</p>
3887
3888       </div>
3889       <div class="tags">
3890
3891
3892         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3893
3894
3895       </div>
3896     </div>
3897     <div class="padding"></div>
3898
3899     <div class="entry">
3900       <div class="title">
3901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
3902       </div>
3903       <div class="date">
3904          3rd July 2012
3905       </div>
3906       <div class="body">
3907         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
3908 project (Norwegian version of
3909 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
3910 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
3911 a problem with the municipalities using
3912 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
3913 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
3914 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
3915 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
3916 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
3917 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
3918 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
3919 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
3920 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
3921 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
3922 the From: header.</p>
3923
3924 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3925 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3926 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3927 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3928 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
3929 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3930 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3931 behaviour.</p>
3932
3933 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3934 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3935 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3936 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3937 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
3938 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
3939 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
3940
3941       </div>
3942       <div class="tags">
3943
3944
3945         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3946
3947
3948       </div>
3949     </div>
3950     <div class="padding"></div>
3951
3952     <div class="entry">
3953       <div class="title">
3954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
3955       </div>
3956       <div class="date">
3957         26th June 2012
3958       </div>
3959       <div class="body">
3960         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3961 another interview with the people behind
3962 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3963 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3964 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
3965 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3966 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3967 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3968 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3969
3970 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3971
3972 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3973 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3974 ICT in schools</p>
3975
3976 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3977 project?</strong></p>
3978
3979 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3980 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3981 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3982 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
3983
3984 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3985 Edu?</strong></p>
3986
3987 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3988 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3989 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3990 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
3991
3992 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3993 Edu?</strong></p>
3994
3995 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3996 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
3997 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3998 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3999 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
4000 technologies in school.</p>
4001
4002 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4003
4004 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
4005 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
4006 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
4007
4008 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4009 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4010
4011 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
4012 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
4013 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
4014 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
4015
4016 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
4017 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
4018 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
4019
4020 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
4021 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
4022 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
4023 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
4024 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
4025 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
4026 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
4027 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
4028 working there.</p>
4029
4030       </div>
4031       <div class="tags">
4032
4033
4034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4035
4036
4037       </div>
4038     </div>
4039     <div class="padding"></div>
4040
4041     <div class="entry">
4042       <div class="title">
4043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
4044       </div>
4045       <div class="date">
4046         24th June 2012
4047       </div>
4048       <div class="body">
4049         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4050 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
4051 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
4052 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4053 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4054 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
4055 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4056 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4057 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
4058 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
4059 missing in my book.</p>
4060
4061 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4062 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4063 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4064 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
4065 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
4066 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
4067 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
4068
4069       </div>
4070       <div class="tags">
4071
4072
4073         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>.
4074
4075
4076       </div>
4077     </div>
4078     <div class="padding"></div>
4079
4080     <div class="entry">
4081       <div class="title">
4082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
4083       </div>
4084       <div class="date">
4085         11th June 2012
4086       </div>
4087       <div class="body">
4088         <p>During my work on
4089 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
4090 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
4091 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
4092 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
4093 explanation.</p>
4094
4095 <p><ul>
4096
4097 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
4098 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
4099 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
4100 system depend on tasksel tasks in
4101 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
4102 installation.</li>
4103
4104 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
4105 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
4106 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
4107 at least try to enable it for these services:
4108 <ul>
4109
4110   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
4111     quotas.</li>
4112   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
4113   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
4114   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
4115   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
4116   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
4117
4118 </ul></li>
4119
4120 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
4121 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
4122 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
4123 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
4124
4125 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
4126 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
4127 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
4128
4129 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
4130 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
4131 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
4132 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
4133 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
4134 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
4135
4136 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
4137 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
4138 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
4139 in Wheezy.
4140
4141 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
4142 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
4143 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
4144
4145 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
4146 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
4147 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
4148 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
4149
4150 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
4151 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
4152 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
4153 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
4154
4155 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
4156 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
4157 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
4158
4159 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
4160 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
4161 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
4162
4163 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
4164 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
4165 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
4166 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
4167 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
4168
4169 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
4170 <ul>
4171
4172 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
4173 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
4174 <li>and probably more?</li>
4175 </ul></li>
4176
4177 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
4178 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
4179 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
4180 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
4181 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
4182 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
4183 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
4184 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
4185
4186
4187 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
4188 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
4189 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
4190 use.</li>
4191
4192 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
4193 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
4194 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
4195 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
4196 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
4197
4198 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
4199 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
4200 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
4201 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
4202 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
4203 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
4204
4205 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
4206 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
4207 There are at least three implementations,
4208 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
4209 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
4210 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
4211 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
4212 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
4213 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
4214 given room.</li>
4215
4216 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
4217 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
4218 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
4219 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
4220 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
4221 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
4222 investigated.</li>
4223
4224 </ul></p>
4225
4226 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
4227 version.</p>
4228
4229       </div>
4230       <div class="tags">
4231
4232
4233         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4234
4235
4236       </div>
4237     </div>
4238     <div class="padding"></div>
4239
4240     <div class="entry">
4241       <div class="title">
4242         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
4243       </div>
4244       <div class="date">
4245          9th June 2012
4246       </div>
4247       <div class="body">
4248         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
4249 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
4250 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
4251 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
4252 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
4253 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
4254 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
4255 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
4256 be willing to pay for.</p>
4257
4258 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
4259 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
4260 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
4261 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
4262 Orwell</a>.</p>
4263
4264       </div>
4265       <div class="tags">
4266
4267
4268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4269
4270
4271       </div>
4272     </div>
4273     <div class="padding"></div>
4274
4275     <div class="entry">
4276       <div class="title">
4277         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
4278       </div>
4279       <div class="date">
4280          6th June 2012
4281       </div>
4282       <div class="body">
4283         <p>A few days ago
4284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
4285 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
4286 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
4287 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
4288 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
4289 code for HP, Dell and IBM
4290 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
4291 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
4292 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
4293 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
4294 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
4295
4296 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
4297 output:
4298
4299 <blockquote><pre>
4300 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
4301 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
4302 %
4303 </pre></blockquote>
4304
4305 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
4306 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
4307 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
4308
4309       </div>
4310       <div class="tags">
4311
4312
4313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4314
4315
4316       </div>
4317     </div>
4318     <div class="padding"></div>
4319
4320     <div class="entry">
4321       <div class="title">
4322         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
4323       </div>
4324       <div class="date">
4325          2nd June 2012
4326       </div>
4327       <div class="body">
4328         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
4329 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4330 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
4331 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
4332 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4333 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4334
4335 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4336
4337 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
4338 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
4339 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
4340 by Angela).</p>
4341
4342 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
4343 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
4344 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
4345 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
4346 becoming an osteopath.</p>
4347
4348 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
4349 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
4350 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
4351 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
4352 skills with communication skills.</p>
4353
4354 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4355 project?</strong></p>
4356
4357 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
4358 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
4359 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
4360 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
4361 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
4362
4363 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
4364 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
4365 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
4366 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
4367 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
4368 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
4369 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
4370 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
4371 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
4372
4373 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
4374 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
4375 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
4376
4377 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
4378
4379 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
4380 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
4381 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
4382 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
4383 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
4384 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
4385 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
4386 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
4387 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
4388 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
4389 point.</p>
4390
4391 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
4392 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
4393 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
4394 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
4395 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
4396 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
4397
4398 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
4399 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
4400 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
4401 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
4402 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
4403 spare time.</p>
4404
4405 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
4406 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
4407 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
4408 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
4409 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
4410
4411 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
4412 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
4413 avoidance do exist.</p>
4414
4415 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
4416 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
4417 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
4418 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
4419 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
4420 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
4421 and probably a gain for all.</p>
4422
4423 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4424 Edu?</strong></p>
4425
4426 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
4427 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
4428 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
4429 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
4430 project communication, honest communication within the group of
4431 developers, etc.</p>
4432
4433 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4434 Edu?</strong></p>
4435
4436 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
4437
4438 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
4439 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
4440 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
4441 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
4442 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
4443 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
4444 contribute).</p>
4445
4446 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
4447 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
4448 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
4449 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
4450 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
4451 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
4452 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
4453 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
4454 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
4455 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
4456
4457 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4458
4459 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
4460
4461 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
4462 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
4463 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
4464
4465 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
4466 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
4467 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
4468 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
4469
4470 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
4471 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
4472 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
4473 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
4474 whiteboard.</p>
4475
4476 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
4477
4478 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4479 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4480
4481 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
4482 enrol people.</p>
4483
4484       </div>
4485       <div class="tags">
4486
4487
4488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4489
4490
4491       </div>
4492     </div>
4493     <div class="padding"></div>
4494
4495     <div class="entry">
4496       <div class="title">
4497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
4498       </div>
4499       <div class="date">
4500          1st June 2012
4501       </div>
4502       <div class="body">
4503         <p>A few years ago I wrote
4504 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
4505 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
4506 I have learned from colleges here at the
4507 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
4508 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
4509 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
4510 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
4511 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
4512
4513 <p><pre>
4514 use strict;
4515 use warnings;
4516 use SOAP::Lite;
4517 use Data::Dumper;
4518 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
4519 my $App = 'test';
4520 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
4521 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
4522 my $s = SOAP::Lite
4523     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
4524     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
4525     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
4526     ;
4527 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
4528     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
4529     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
4530     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
4531 );
4532 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
4533 </pre></p>
4534
4535 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
4536
4537 <p><pre>
4538 $VAR1 = {
4539           'Asset' => {
4540                      'Entitlements' => {
4541                                        'EntitlementData' => [
4542                                                             {
4543                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4544                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
4545                                                               'Provider' => '',
4546                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4547                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4548                                                             },
4549                                                             {
4550                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4551                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
4552                                                               'Provider' => '',
4553                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4554                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4555                                                             },
4556                                                             {
4557                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
4558                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
4559                                                               'Provider' => '',
4560                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
4561                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
4562                                                             }
4563                                                           ]
4564                                      },
4565                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
4566                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
4567                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
4568                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
4569                                           'Buid' => '2323',
4570                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
4571                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
4572                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
4573                                         }
4574                    }
4575         };
4576 </pre></p>
4577
4578 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
4579 service outside the
4580 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
4581 documentation</a>, and according to
4582 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
4583 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
4584 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
4585
4586 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
4587 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
4588
4589       </div>
4590       <div class="tags">
4591
4592
4593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
4594
4595
4596       </div>
4597     </div>
4598     <div class="padding"></div>
4599
4600     <div class="entry">
4601       <div class="title">
4602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
4603       </div>
4604       <div class="date">
4605         31st May 2012
4606       </div>
4607       <div class="body">
4608         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
4609 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
4610 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
4611 running Debian Squeeze, where
4612 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
4613 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
4614 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
4615 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
4616 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
4617 another day.</p>
4618
4619 <p>After calibration, I get a
4620 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
4621 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
4622 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
4623 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
4624 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
4625 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
4626 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
4627 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
4628 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
4629 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
4630 and a simple</p>
4631
4632 <p><pre>
4633 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
4634 </pre></p>
4635
4636 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
4637 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
4638 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
4639 enough for now.</p>
4640
4641       </div>
4642       <div class="tags">
4643
4644
4645         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4646
4647
4648       </div>
4649     </div>
4650     <div class="padding"></div>
4651
4652     <div class="entry">
4653       <div class="title">
4654         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
4655       </div>
4656       <div class="date">
4657         27th May 2012
4658       </div>
4659       <div class="body">
4660         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
4661 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4662 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
4663 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
4664 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
4665 since then, helping to make sure the
4666 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
4667 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
4668
4669 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4670
4671 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
4672 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
4673 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
4674 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
4675 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
4676 our computer network.</p>
4677
4678 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
4679 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
4680 (4 months).</p>
4681
4682 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4683 project?</strong></p>
4684
4685 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
4686 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
4687 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
4688 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
4689 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
4690 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
4691 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
4692 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
4693 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
4694 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
4695 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
4696 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
4697 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
4698 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
4699
4700 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4701 Edu?</strong></p>
4702
4703 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
4704 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
4705 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
4706 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
4707 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
4708 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
4709 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
4710 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
4711
4712 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4713 Edu?</strong></p>
4714
4715 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
4716 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
4717 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
4718 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
4719 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
4720 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
4721 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
4722 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
4723 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
4724 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
4725 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
4726 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
4727
4728 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4729
4730 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
4731 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
4732 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
4733
4734 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4735 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4736
4737 <p><ol>
4738
4739 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
4740 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
4741 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
4742 developing.</li>
4743
4744 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
4745 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
4746 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
4747 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
4748 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
4749
4750 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
4751 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
4752 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
4753
4754 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
4755 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
4756 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
4757 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
4758
4759 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
4760 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
4761 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
4762
4763 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
4764
4765 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
4766 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
4767 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
4768 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
4769
4770 </ol></p>
4771
4772       </div>
4773       <div class="tags">
4774
4775
4776         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4777
4778
4779       </div>
4780     </div>
4781     <div class="padding"></div>
4782
4783     <div class="entry">
4784       <div class="title">
4785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="date">
4788         26th May 2012
4789       </div>
4790       <div class="body">
4791         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
4792 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
4793 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
4794 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
4795 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
4796
4797 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
4798 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
4799 comment:</p>
4800
4801 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
4802 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
4803 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
4804 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
4805 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
4806 </blockquote></p>
4807
4808 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
4809 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
4810 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
4811 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
4812 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
4813 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
4814 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
4815 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
4816 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
4817 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
4818 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
4819 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
4820 of wasted effort.</p>
4821
4822 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
4823 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
4824 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
4825
4826 <p>See
4827 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
4828 and
4829 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
4830 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
4831 </blockquote></p>
4832
4833       </div>
4834       <div class="tags">
4835
4836
4837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
4838
4839
4840       </div>
4841     </div>
4842     <div class="padding"></div>
4843
4844     <div class="entry">
4845       <div class="title">
4846         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
4847       </div>
4848       <div class="date">
4849         18th May 2012
4850       </div>
4851       <div class="body">
4852         <p>In january, I
4853 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
4854 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
4855 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
4856 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
4857 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
4858 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
4859 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
4860 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
4861 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
4862 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
4863
4864 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
4865 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
4866 drivers. :)</p>
4867
4868       </div>
4869       <div class="tags">
4870
4871
4872         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4873
4874
4875       </div>
4876     </div>
4877     <div class="padding"></div>
4878
4879     <div class="entry">
4880       <div class="title">
4881         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
4882       </div>
4883       <div class="date">
4884         13th May 2012
4885       </div>
4886       <div class="body">
4887         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
4888 publish another interview with the people behind
4889 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
4890 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
4891 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
4892 details get right before release.
4893
4894 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4895
4896 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
4897 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
4898 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
4899 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
4900 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
4901 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
4902 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
4903 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
4904
4905 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
4906 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
4907 home since 2006.</p>
4908
4909 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4910 project?</strong></p>
4911
4912 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
4913 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
4914 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
4915 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
4916 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
4917 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
4918
4919 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
4920 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
4921 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
4922 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
4923 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
4924 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4925 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4926 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4927 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4928 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
4929 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4930 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
4931 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
4932 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4933 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4934 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
4935
4936 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4937 Edu?</strong></p>
4938
4939 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4940 for me as today.</p>
4941
4942 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
4943
4944 <p><ul>
4945
4946 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4947 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
4948
4949 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4950 cost.</li>
4951
4952 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4953 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4954 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
4955 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4956 server</li>
4957
4958 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4959 school.</li>
4960
4961 </ul></p>
4962
4963 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4964 came up in this way:</p>
4965
4966 <p><ul>
4967
4968 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4969 now.</li>
4970
4971 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4972 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4973 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
4974
4975 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4976 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4977 interfaces used in the past.</li>
4978
4979 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4980 different needs.</li>
4981
4982 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
4983
4984 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4985 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4986 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
4987
4988 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4989 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
4990
4991 </ul></p>
4992
4993 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4994 Edu?</strong></p>
4995
4996 <p><ul>
4997
4998 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4999 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
5000 whole municipality areas.</li>
5001
5002 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
5003 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
5004 politicians.</li>
5005
5006 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
5007
5008 </ul></p>
5009
5010 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5011
5012 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
5013 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
5014 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
5015 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
5016 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
5017 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
5018
5019 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
5020 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
5021 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
5022 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
5023 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
5024
5025 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5026 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5027
5028 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
5029 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
5030 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
5031
5032       </div>
5033       <div class="tags">
5034
5035
5036         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5037
5038
5039       </div>
5040     </div>
5041     <div class="padding"></div>
5042
5043     <div class="entry">
5044       <div class="title">
5045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
5046       </div>
5047       <div class="date">
5048         30th April 2012
5049       </div>
5050       <div class="body">
5051         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
5052 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
5053
5054 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
5055 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
5056 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
5057 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
5058 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
5059 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
5060 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
5061 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
5062 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
5063 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
5064 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
5065 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
5066 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
5067 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
5068 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
5069 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
5070
5071 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
5072 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
5073 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
5074 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
5075 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
5076 finally found a Danish supplier
5077 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
5078 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
5079 days ago.</p>
5080
5081 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
5082 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
5083 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
5084 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
5085 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
5086 toys.</p>
5087
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="tags">
5090
5091
5092         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5093
5094
5095       </div>
5096     </div>
5097     <div class="padding"></div>
5098
5099     <div class="entry">
5100       <div class="title">
5101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="date">
5104         26th April 2012
5105       </div>
5106       <div class="body">
5107         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
5108 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
5109 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
5110 that the video editor application included with
5111 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
5112 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
5113 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
5114
5115 <p><blockquote>
5116 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
5117 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
5118 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
5119 </blockquote></p>
5120
5121 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
5122
5123 <p><blockquote>
5124 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
5125 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
5126 </blockquote></p>
5127
5128 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
5129 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
5130 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
5131 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
5132 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
5133 video.  AMR is
5134 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
5135 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
5136 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
5137 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
5138 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
5139 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
5140 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
5141
5142 <p>I know why I prefer
5143 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
5144 standards</a> also for video.</p>
5145
5146       </div>
5147       <div class="tags">
5148
5149
5150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5151
5152
5153       </div>
5154     </div>
5155     <div class="padding"></div>
5156
5157     <div class="entry">
5158       <div class="title">
5159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
5160       </div>
5161       <div class="date">
5162         19th April 2012
5163       </div>
5164       <div class="body">
5165         <p>Here in Norway, the
5166 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
5167 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
5168 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
5169 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
5170 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
5171 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
5172 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
5173 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
5174 on the same level.</p>
5175
5176 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
5177 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
5178 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
5179 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
5180 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
5181 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
5182 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
5183 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
5184 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
5185 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
5186 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
5187 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
5188 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
5189 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
5190 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
5191 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
5192 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
5193 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
5194
5195 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
5196 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
5197 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
5198 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
5199 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
5200 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
5201 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
5202 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
5203
5204 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
5205 from Simon Phipps
5206 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
5207 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
5208
5209 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
5210 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
5211 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
5212 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
5213 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
5214 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
5215 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
5216 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
5217 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
5218
5219       </div>
5220       <div class="tags">
5221
5222
5223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5224
5225
5226       </div>
5227     </div>
5228     <div class="padding"></div>
5229
5230     <div class="entry">
5231       <div class="title">
5232         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
5233       </div>
5234       <div class="date">
5235         15th April 2012
5236       </div>
5237       <div class="body">
5238         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5239 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
5240 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
5241 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
5242 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
5243 up in the recently released
5244 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5245 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
5246
5247 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5248
5249 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
5250 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
5251 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
5252 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
5253 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
5254 information technology and science/technology.</p>
5255
5256 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5257 project?</strong></p>
5258
5259 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
5260 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
5261 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
5262 contributing.</p>
5263
5264 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5265 Edu?</strong></p>
5266
5267 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
5268 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
5269 Debian Project!</p>
5270
5271 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5272 Edu?</strong></p>
5273
5274 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
5275 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
5276 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
5277 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
5278 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
5279 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
5280 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
5281
5282 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
5283 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
5284
5285 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5286
5287 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
5288 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
5289 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
5290 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
5291
5292 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5293 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5294
5295 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
5296 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
5297 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
5298 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
5299 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
5300 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
5301 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
5302
5303 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
5304 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
5305 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
5306 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
5307 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
5308 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
5309 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
5310 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
5311
5312       </div>
5313       <div class="tags">
5314
5315
5316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5317
5318
5319       </div>
5320     </div>
5321     <div class="padding"></div>
5322
5323     <div class="entry">
5324       <div class="title">
5325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
5326       </div>
5327       <div class="date">
5328          8th April 2012
5329       </div>
5330       <div class="body">
5331         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
5332 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
5333 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
5334 contributor to the
5335 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
5336 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
5337
5338 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5339
5340 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
5341 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
5342
5343 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5344 project?</strong></p>
5345
5346 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
5347 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
5348 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
5349 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
5350 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
5351 "localisation".</p>
5352
5353 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5354 Edu?</strong></p>
5355
5356 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5357 Edu?</strong></p>
5358
5359 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
5360 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
5361 education system.</p>
5362
5363 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
5364 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
5365 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
5366 money on the latest hardware.</p>
5367
5368 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5369
5370 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
5371 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
5372 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
5373
5374 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5375 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5376
5377 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
5378 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
5379 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
5380
5381       </div>
5382       <div class="tags">
5383
5384
5385         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5386
5387
5388       </div>
5389     </div>
5390     <div class="padding"></div>
5391
5392     <div class="entry">
5393       <div class="title">
5394         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
5395       </div>
5396       <div class="date">
5397          6th April 2012
5398       </div>
5399       <div class="body">
5400         <p>Recently I have spent time with
5401 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
5402 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5403 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
5404 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
5405 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
5406 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
5407 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
5408 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
5409
5410 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
5411 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
5412 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
5413 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
5414 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
5415 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
5416 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
5417 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
5418
5419 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
5420 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
5421 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
5422 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
5423 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
5424 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
5425 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
5426 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
5427
5428 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
5429 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
5430 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
5431 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
5432 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
5433 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
5434 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
5435 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
5436 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
5437 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
5438
5439 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
5440 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
5441 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
5442 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
5443
5444 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
5445 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
5446
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="tags">
5449
5450
5451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5452
5453
5454       </div>
5455     </div>
5456     <div class="padding"></div>
5457
5458     <div class="entry">
5459       <div class="title">
5460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
5461       </div>
5462       <div class="date">
5463          5th April 2012
5464       </div>
5465       <div class="body">
5466         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
5467 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
5468 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
5469 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
5470 for schools.  Check out his article
5471 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
5472 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
5473
5474       </div>
5475       <div class="tags">
5476
5477
5478         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5479
5480
5481       </div>
5482     </div>
5483     <div class="padding"></div>
5484
5485     <div class="entry">
5486       <div class="title">
5487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
5488       </div>
5489       <div class="date">
5490          1st April 2012
5491       </div>
5492       <div class="body">
5493         <p>Germany is a core area for the
5494 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5495 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
5496 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
5497
5498 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5499
5500 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
5501 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
5502 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
5503 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
5504 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
5505 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
5506 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
5507 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
5508
5509 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
5510 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
5511 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
5512 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
5513 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
5514 the end of April this year.</p>
5515
5516 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5517 project?</strong></p>
5518
5519 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
5520 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
5521 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
5522 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
5523 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
5524 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
5525 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
5526 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
5527 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
5528 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
5529 Skolelinux.</p>
5530
5531 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
5532 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
5533 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
5534 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
5535 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
5536 the admin teachers.</p>
5537
5538 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5539 Edu?</strong></p>
5540
5541 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
5542 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
5543 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
5544
5545 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
5546 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
5547 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
5548 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
5549 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
5550
5551 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5552 Edu?</strong></p>
5553
5554 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
5555
5556 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5557
5558 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
5559 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
5560 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
5561 LibreOffice.</p>
5562
5563 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5564 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5565
5566 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
5567 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
5568 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
5569
5570       </div>
5571       <div class="tags">
5572
5573
5574         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5575
5576
5577       </div>
5578     </div>
5579     <div class="padding"></div>
5580
5581     <div class="entry">
5582       <div class="title">
5583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
5584       </div>
5585       <div class="date">
5586         25th March 2012
5587       </div>
5588       <div class="body">
5589         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5590
5591 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
5592 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
5593 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
5594 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
5595 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
5596 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
5597 and download as a
5598 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
5599 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
5600
5601 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5602   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
5603     <p>Download video as
5604       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
5605 </video></p>
5606
5607       </div>
5608       <div class="tags">
5609
5610
5611         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5612
5613
5614       </div>
5615     </div>
5616     <div class="padding"></div>
5617
5618     <div class="entry">
5619       <div class="title">
5620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
5621       </div>
5622       <div class="date">
5623         19th March 2012
5624       </div>
5625       <div class="body">
5626         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5627 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
5628 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
5629 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
5630 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
5631
5632 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5633
5634 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
5635 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
5636 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
5637 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
5638 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
5639 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
5640 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
5641 installations.</p>
5642
5643 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5644 project?</strong></p>
5645
5646 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
5647 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
5648 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
5649 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
5650 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
5651 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
5652 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
5653 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
5654 these things we decided to try it.</p>
5655
5656 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5657 Edu?</strong></p>
5658
5659 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
5660 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
5661 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
5662 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
5663 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
5664 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
5665 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
5666 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
5667
5668 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5669 Edu?</strong></p>
5670
5671 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
5672 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
5673 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
5674 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
5675 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
5676
5677 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5678
5679 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
5680 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
5681 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
5682 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
5683 that counts...)</p>
5684
5685 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5686 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5687
5688 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
5689 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
5690 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
5691 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
5692 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
5693 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
5694 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
5695 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
5696 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
5697 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
5698 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
5699
5700 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
5701 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
5702 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
5703
5704       </div>
5705       <div class="tags">
5706
5707
5708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5709
5710
5711       </div>
5712     </div>
5713     <div class="padding"></div>
5714
5715     <div class="entry">
5716       <div class="title">
5717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
5718       </div>
5719       <div class="date">
5720         16th March 2012
5721       </div>
5722       <div class="body">
5723         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
5724 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
5725 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
5726 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
5727
5728 <ol>
5729
5730 <li>The documentation is written in a
5731 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
5732 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
5733 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
5734 docbook XML.</li>
5735
5736 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
5737 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
5738 with the translated text.</li>
5739
5740 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
5741 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
5742 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
5743 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
5744 images.</li>
5745
5746 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
5747 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
5748
5749 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
5750 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
5751
5752 </ol>
5753
5754 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
5755 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
5756 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
5757 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
5758 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
5759
5760 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
5761 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
5762 package</a>.</p>
5763
5764       </div>
5765       <div class="tags">
5766
5767
5768         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5769
5770
5771       </div>
5772     </div>
5773     <div class="padding"></div>
5774
5775     <div class="entry">
5776       <div class="title">
5777         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
5778       </div>
5779       <div class="date">
5780         11th March 2012
5781       </div>
5782       <div class="body">
5783         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
5784 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
5785 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5786 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
5787 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
5788 you have not done so already.</p>
5789
5790 <p>I plan to present the new version at
5791 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
5792 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
5793 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
5794
5795       </div>
5796       <div class="tags">
5797
5798
5799         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5800
5801
5802       </div>
5803     </div>
5804     <div class="padding"></div>
5805
5806     <div class="entry">
5807       <div class="title">
5808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
5809       </div>
5810       <div class="date">
5811          9th March 2012
5812       </div>
5813       <div class="body">
5814         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
5815 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
5816 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5817 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
5818 more international audience.</p>
5819
5820 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5821 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
5822 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
5823 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
5824 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
5825 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
5826 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
5827
5828
5829 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5830
5831 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
5832 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
5833 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
5834 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
5835 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
5836 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
5837 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
5838 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
5839 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
5840 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
5841 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
5842
5843 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5844 project?</strong></p>
5845
5846 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
5847 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
5848 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
5849 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
5850 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
5851 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
5852 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
5853 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
5854 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
5855 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
5856 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
5857 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
5858 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
5859
5860 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5861 Edu?</strong></p>
5862
5863 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
5864 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
5865 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
5866 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
5867 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
5868 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
5869 Japan.</p>
5870
5871 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5872 Edu?</strong></p>
5873
5874 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
5875 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
5876 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
5877 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
5878 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
5879 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
5880 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
5881 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
5882 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
5883 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
5884 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
5885 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
5886 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
5887 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
5888 help.</p>
5889
5890 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5891
5892 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
5893 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
5894 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
5895 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
5896 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
5897 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
5898 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
5899 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
5900 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
5901 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
5902 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
5903
5904 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5905 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5906
5907 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
5908 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
5909 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
5910 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
5911 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
5912 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
5913 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
5914 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
5915 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
5916 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
5917 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
5918 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
5919
5920       </div>
5921       <div class="tags">
5922
5923
5924         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
5925
5926
5927       </div>
5928     </div>
5929     <div class="padding"></div>
5930
5931     <div class="entry">
5932       <div class="title">
5933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
5934       </div>
5935       <div class="date">
5936          7th March 2012
5937       </div>
5938       <div class="body">
5939         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5940
5941 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5942 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5943 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5944 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
5945 download as a
5946 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
5947 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
5948
5949 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5950   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
5951     <p>Download video as
5952       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
5953 </video></p>
5954
5955       </div>
5956       <div class="tags">
5957
5958
5959         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5960
5961
5962       </div>
5963     </div>
5964     <div class="padding"></div>
5965
5966     <div class="entry">
5967       <div class="title">
5968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5969       </div>
5970       <div class="date">
5971          4th March 2012
5972       </div>
5973       <div class="body">
5974         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5975 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5976 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5977 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
5978 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5979 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5980
5981       </div>
5982       <div class="tags">
5983
5984
5985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5986
5987
5988       </div>
5989     </div>
5990     <div class="padding"></div>
5991
5992     <div class="entry">
5993       <div class="title">
5994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="date">
5997          3rd March 2012
5998       </div>
5999       <div class="body">
6000         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
6001 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
6002 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
6003 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
6004 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
6005 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
6006 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
6007 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
6008 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
6009 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
6010 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
6011 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
6012 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
6013 year...</p>
6014
6015 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
6016 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
6017 name,
6018 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
6019 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
6020 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
6021 mean). I've been following
6022 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
6023 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
6024 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
6025 Check it out. :)</p>
6026
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="tags">
6029
6030
6031         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6032
6033
6034       </div>
6035     </div>
6036     <div class="padding"></div>
6037
6038     <div class="entry">
6039       <div class="title">
6040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6041       </div>
6042       <div class="date">
6043         27th February 2012
6044       </div>
6045       <div class="body">
6046         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
6047 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6048 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
6049 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
6050 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
6051 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
6052 need a software solution for your school.</p>
6053
6054       </div>
6055       <div class="tags">
6056
6057
6058         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6059
6060
6061       </div>
6062     </div>
6063     <div class="padding"></div>
6064
6065     <div class="entry">
6066       <div class="title">
6067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6068       </div>
6069       <div class="date">
6070         19th February 2012
6071       </div>
6072       <div class="body">
6073         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
6074 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
6075 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6076 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
6077 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
6078 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
6079 solution for your school.</p>
6080
6081       </div>
6082       <div class="tags">
6083
6084
6085         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6086
6087
6088       </div>
6089     </div>
6090     <div class="padding"></div>
6091
6092     <div class="entry">
6093       <div class="title">
6094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
6095       </div>
6096       <div class="date">
6097         14th February 2012
6098       </div>
6099       <div class="body">
6100         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
6101 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
6102 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
6103 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
6104 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
6105 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
6106 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
6107 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
6108 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
6109
6110 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
6111 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
6112 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
6113 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
6114 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
6115
6116 <blockquote><pre>
6117 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
6118 do
6119     printf "Failed disk $d: "
6120     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
6121 done
6122 </blockquote></pre>
6123
6124 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
6125 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
6126
6127 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
6128
6129 <blockquote><pre>
6130 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
6131 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
6132 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
6133 </blockquote></pre>
6134
6135 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
6136 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
6137 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
6138 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
6139 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
6140 mounted inside my box.</p>
6141
6142 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
6143 Software RAID in the
6144 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
6145 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
6146 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
6147 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
6148 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
6149 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
6150
6151       </div>
6152       <div class="tags">
6153
6154
6155         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
6156
6157
6158       </div>
6159     </div>
6160     <div class="padding"></div>
6161
6162     <div class="entry">
6163       <div class="title">
6164         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
6165       </div>
6166       <div class="date">
6167         13th February 2012
6168       </div>
6169       <div class="body">
6170         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
6171 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
6172 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
6173 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
6174 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
6175 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
6176 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
6177 change the global proxy setting by editing
6178 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
6179 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
6180
6181 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
6182 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
6183 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
6184
6185 <blockquote><pre>
6186 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
6187 {
6188    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
6189        isPlainHostName(host) ||
6190        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
6191       return "DIRECT";
6192    else
6193       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
6194 }
6195 </pre></blockquote>
6196
6197 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
6198
6199 <blockquote><pre>
6200 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6201 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
6202 </pre></blockquote>
6203
6204 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
6205 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
6206 would be used for
6207 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
6208 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
6209 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
6210 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
6211 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
6212 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
6213 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
6214 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
6215 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
6216 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
6217
6218 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
6219 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
6220 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
6221 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
6222 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
6223 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
6224
6225 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
6226 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
6227 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
6228 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
6229 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
6230 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
6231 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
6232 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
6233 the network setup changes.</p>
6234
6235 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
6236 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
6237 draft</a> and a
6238 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
6239 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257          5th February 2012
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>Since the Lenny version of
6261 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
6262 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
6263 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
6264 in the morning.  This is done using the
6265 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
6266
6267 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
6268 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
6269 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
6270 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
6271 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
6272 the
6273 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
6274 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
6275 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
6276 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
6277 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
6278
6279 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
6280 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
6281 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
6282 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
6283 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
6284 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
6285 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
6286
6287 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
6288 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
6289 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
6290 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
6291 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
6292
6293       </div>
6294       <div class="tags">
6295
6296
6297         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6298
6299
6300       </div>
6301     </div>
6302     <div class="padding"></div>
6303
6304     <div class="entry">
6305       <div class="title">
6306         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6307       </div>
6308       <div class="date">
6309          4th February 2012
6310       </div>
6311       <div class="body">
6312         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
6313 publish the third beta version of
6314 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6315 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
6316 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
6317 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
6318 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
6319 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
6320 on the project announcement list.</p>
6321
6322 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
6323 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
6324
6325 <ul>
6326
6327 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
6328   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
6329   the installation.</li>
6330
6331 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
6332   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
6333
6334 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
6335   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
6336   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
6337
6338 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
6339   for the local system administrator is created during installation
6340   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
6341   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
6342   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
6343   up to date on the system.</li>
6344
6345 </ul>
6346
6347 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
6348 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
6349 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
6350 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
6351
6352 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
6353 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
6354 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
6355 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
6356 will see you there?</p>
6357
6358       </div>
6359       <div class="tags">
6360
6361
6362         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6363
6364
6365       </div>
6366     </div>
6367     <div class="padding"></div>
6368
6369     <div class="entry">
6370       <div class="title">
6371         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6372       </div>
6373       <div class="date">
6374         27th January 2012
6375       </div>
6376       <div class="body">
6377         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
6378 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
6379 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
6380 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
6381 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
6382 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
6383 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
6384
6385 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
6386 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
6387 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
6388 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
6389 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
6390 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
6391 not taken care of by this.</p>
6392
6393 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
6394 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
6395 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
6396 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
6397 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
6398 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
6399 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
6400 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
6401 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
6402 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
6403 firmware packages.</p>
6404
6405 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
6406 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
6407 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
6408 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
6409 initrd with extra firmware, the
6410 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
6411 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
6412 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
6413
6414 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
6415 network cards working.  For this,
6416 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
6417 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
6418 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
6419
6420 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
6421 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
6422 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
6423
6424 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
6425 try.</p>
6426
6427       </div>
6428       <div class="tags">
6429
6430
6431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6432
6433
6434       </div>
6435     </div>
6436     <div class="padding"></div>
6437
6438     <div class="entry">
6439       <div class="title">
6440         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6441       </div>
6442       <div class="date">
6443         25th January 2012
6444       </div>
6445       <div class="body">
6446         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
6447 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
6448 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
6449 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
6450 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
6451
6452 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
6453 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
6454 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
6455 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
6456 this is done, log on to the central server and run
6457 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
6458 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
6459 will look similar to this:</p>
6460
6461 <p><blockquote><pre>
6462 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
6463 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
6464 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
6465
6466 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
6467
6468 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6469 enter password: *******
6470 %
6471 </pre></blockquote></p>
6472
6473 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
6474 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
6475 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
6476 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
6477 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
6478 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
6479 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
6480 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
6481 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
6482 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
6483 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
6484 automatically.</p>
6485
6486 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
6487 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
6488
6489 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
6490 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
6491 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
6492
6493       </div>
6494       <div class="tags">
6495
6496
6497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
6498
6499
6500       </div>
6501     </div>
6502     <div class="padding"></div>
6503
6504     <div class="entry">
6505       <div class="title">
6506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
6507       </div>
6508       <div class="date">
6509         10th January 2012
6510       </div>
6511       <div class="body">
6512         <p>In the Squeeze version of
6513 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
6514 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
6515 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
6516 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
6517 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
6518 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
6519 first time.</p>
6520
6521 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
6522 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
6523 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
6524 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
6525
6526 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
6527 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
6528 new setting.</p>
6529
6530 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
6531 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
6532 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
6533
6534       </div>
6535       <div class="tags">
6536
6537
6538         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6539
6540
6541       </div>
6542     </div>
6543     <div class="padding"></div>
6544
6545     <div class="entry">
6546       <div class="title">
6547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
6548       </div>
6549       <div class="date">
6550          7th January 2012
6551       </div>
6552       <div class="body">
6553         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
6554 the second beta version of
6555 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
6556 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
6557 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
6558 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
6559 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
6560 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
6561 on the project announcement list.</p>
6562
6563       </div>
6564       <div class="tags">
6565
6566
6567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6568
6569
6570       </div>
6571     </div>
6572     <div class="padding"></div>
6573
6574     <div class="entry">
6575       <div class="title">
6576         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
6577       </div>
6578       <div class="date">
6579          3rd January 2012
6580       </div>
6581       <div class="body">
6582         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
6583 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
6584 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
6585 interesting.</p>
6586
6587 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
6588 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
6589 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
6590 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
6591 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
6592 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
6593 wrap up its tasks.</p>
6594
6595 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
6596 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
6597 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
6598 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
6599 because I was typing.</P>
6600
6601 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
6602 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
6603 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
6604 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
6605 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
6606 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
6607 generate entropy.</p>
6608
6609 <p>The fix is in
6610 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
6611 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
6612 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
6613 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
6614
6615       </div>
6616       <div class="tags">
6617
6618
6619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6620
6621
6622       </div>
6623     </div>
6624     <div class="padding"></div>
6625
6626     <div class="entry">
6627       <div class="title">
6628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
6629       </div>
6630       <div class="date">
6631         21st November 2011
6632       </div>
6633       <div class="body">
6634         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
6635 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
6636 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
6637 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
6638 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
6639 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
6640 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
6641 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
6642 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
6643 the tools to do so.</p>
6644
6645 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
6646 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
6647 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
6648 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
6649
6650 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
6651 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
6652 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
6653 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
6654 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
6655 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
6656 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
6657 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
6658
6659 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
6660 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
6661 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
6662
6663 <p><pre>
6664 #!/usr/bin/perl
6665 use strict;
6666 use warnings;
6667 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6668 BEGIN {
6669     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6670     my %rhelmodules = (
6671         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
6672         );
6673     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6674         eval "use $module;";
6675         if ($@) {
6676             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6677             system("yum install -y $pkg");
6678             eval "use $module;";
6679         }
6680     }
6681 }
6682 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6683
6684 upgrade_dell();
6685
6686 exit 0;
6687
6688 sub run_firmware_script {
6689     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6690     unless ($script) {
6691         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6692         exit 1
6693     }
6694     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6695
6696     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6697         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6698     } else {
6699         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6700     }
6701 }
6702
6703 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6704     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6705     # Run firmware packages
6706     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6707         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6708         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6709         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6710             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6711             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6712         }
6713         closedir $dh;
6714     }
6715 }
6716
6717 sub download {
6718     my $url = shift;
6719     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6720     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6721 }
6722
6723 sub upgrade_dell {
6724     my @dirs;
6725     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6726     chomp $product;
6727
6728     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6729
6730         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6731         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6732
6733         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6734             CLEANUP => 1
6735             );
6736         chdir($tmpdir);
6737         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6738         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6739         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6740         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6741         my $fwopts = "-q";
6742         if (@paths) {
6743             for my $url (@paths) {
6744                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6745             }
6746             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6747         } else {
6748             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6749             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6750         }
6751         chdir('/');
6752     } else {
6753         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6754         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6755     }
6756 }
6757
6758 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6759     my $path = shift;
6760     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6761     download($url);
6762 }
6763
6764 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6765 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6766 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6767 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6768     my $filename = shift;
6769
6770     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6771     chomp $product;
6772     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6773
6774     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6775
6776     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6777     my @paths;
6778     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6779         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
6780         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
6781         my $oscode;
6782         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
6783             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
6784         } else {
6785             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
6786         }
6787         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6788         {
6789             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
6790         }
6791     }
6792     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6793         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
6794
6795         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6796         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6797
6798         my $cpath = $component->{path};
6799         for my $path (@paths) {
6800             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6801                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6802             }
6803         }
6804     }
6805     return @paths;
6806 }
6807 </pre>
6808
6809 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6810 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6811 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6812 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6813 outdated.</p>
6814
6815       </div>
6816       <div class="tags">
6817
6818
6819         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>.
6820
6821
6822       </div>
6823     </div>
6824     <div class="padding"></div>
6825
6826     <div class="entry">
6827       <div class="title">
6828         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
6829       </div>
6830       <div class="date">
6831          7th October 2011
6832       </div>
6833       <div class="body">
6834         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
6835 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
6836 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
6837 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
6838 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
6839 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
6840 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
6841 models.</p>
6842
6843 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
6844 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
6845 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
6846 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
6847
6848 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
6849 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
6850 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
6851 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
6852 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
6853 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
6854 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
6855 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
6856 distributed.</p>
6857
6858 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
6859
6860 <ul>
6861
6862 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
6863   other relevant equipment.</li>
6864
6865 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
6866
6867 </ul>
6868
6869 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
6870 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
6871 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
6872 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
6873 books available.</p>
6874
6875 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
6876 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
6877 libraries. :)</p>
6878
6879       </div>
6880       <div class="tags">
6881
6882
6883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6884
6885
6886       </div>
6887     </div>
6888     <div class="padding"></div>
6889
6890     <div class="entry">
6891       <div class="title">
6892         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
6893       </div>
6894       <div class="date">
6895         17th September 2011
6896       </div>
6897       <div class="body">
6898         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
6899 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
6900 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
6901 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
6902 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
6903 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
6904 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
6905 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
6906
6907 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
6908
6909 <blockquote><pre>
6910 #!/bin/sh
6911 # apt-get install lsdvd
6912 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
6913 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
6914 </pre></blockquote>
6915
6916 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
6917 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
6918 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
6919 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
6920
6921 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
6922 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
6923 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
6924 back as an ISO.
6925
6926 <blockquote><pre>
6927 #!/bin/sh
6928 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
6929 set -e
6930 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
6931 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
6932 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
6933 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
6934 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
6935 </pre></blockquote>
6936
6937 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
6938
6939 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
6940 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
6941 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
6942 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
6943 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
6944
6945 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
6946 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
6947 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
6948 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
6949 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
6950 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
6951
6952       </div>
6953       <div class="tags">
6954
6955
6956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6957
6958
6959       </div>
6960     </div>
6961     <div class="padding"></div>
6962
6963     <div class="entry">
6964       <div class="title">
6965         <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>
6966       </div>
6967       <div class="date">
6968          4th August 2011
6969       </div>
6970       <div class="body">
6971         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6972 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6973 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6974 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6975 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6976 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6977 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6978 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6979 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6980
6981 <p><blockquote>
6982 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6983 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6984 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6985 </blockquote></p>
6986
6987 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6988 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6989 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6990 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6991 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6992 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6993 hard to explain.</p>
6994
6995 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6996 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6997 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6998 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6999 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
7000 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
7001 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
7002 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
7003 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
7004 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
7005 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
7006 mode).</p>
7007
7008 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
7009 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
7010 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
7011 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
7012 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
7013 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
7014 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
7015 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
7016 after visiting single user mode.</p>
7017
7018 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
7019 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
7020 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
7021 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
7022 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
7023 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
7024 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
7025 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
7026
7027 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
7028 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
7029 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
7030
7031       </div>
7032       <div class="tags">
7033
7034
7035         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>.
7036
7037
7038       </div>
7039     </div>
7040     <div class="padding"></div>
7041
7042     <div class="entry">
7043       <div class="title">
7044         <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>
7045       </div>
7046       <div class="date">
7047         30th July 2011
7048       </div>
7049       <div class="body">
7050         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
7051 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
7052 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
7053 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
7054 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
7055 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
7056 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
7057 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
7058 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
7059 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
7060 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
7061 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
7062 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
7063
7064 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
7065 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
7066 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
7067 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
7068 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
7069 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
7070 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
7071 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
7072 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
7073
7074 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
7075 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
7076 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
7077 is presented.</p>
7078
7079 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
7080 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
7081 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
7082 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
7083 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
7084 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
7085 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
7086 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
7087 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
7088 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
7089 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
7090 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
7091 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
7092 find time to push this forward.</p>
7093
7094       </div>
7095       <div class="tags">
7096
7097
7098         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>.
7099
7100
7101       </div>
7102     </div>
7103     <div class="padding"></div>
7104
7105     <div class="entry">
7106       <div class="title">
7107         <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>
7108       </div>
7109       <div class="date">
7110         29th July 2011
7111       </div>
7112       <div class="body">
7113         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
7114 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
7115 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
7116 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
7117 issues.</p>
7118
7119 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
7120 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
7121 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
7122
7123 <ol>
7124
7125 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
7126 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
7127 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
7128 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
7129 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
7130 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
7131 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
7132 Debian.</li>
7133
7134 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
7135 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
7136 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
7137 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
7138 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
7139 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
7140 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
7141 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
7142 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
7143 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
7144 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
7145 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
7146 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
7147
7148 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
7149 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
7150 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
7151 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
7152 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
7153 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
7154 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
7155 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
7156 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
7157 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
7158
7159 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
7160 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
7161 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
7162 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
7163 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
7164 latter behaviour.</li>
7165
7166 </ol>
7167
7168 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
7169 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
7170 it do not matter much.</p>
7171
7172 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
7173 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
7174 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
7175
7176       </div>
7177       <div class="tags">
7178
7179
7180         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7181
7182
7183       </div>
7184     </div>
7185     <div class="padding"></div>
7186
7187     <div class="entry">
7188       <div class="title">
7189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
7190       </div>
7191       <div class="date">
7192         26th July 2011
7193       </div>
7194       <div class="body">
7195         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
7196 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
7197 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
7198 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
7199 security support for a few years.</p>
7200
7201 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
7202 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
7203 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
7204 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
7205 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
7206 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
7207 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
7208 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
7209 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
7210 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
7211 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
7212 easier in the future.</p>
7213
7214 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
7215 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
7216 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
7217 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
7218 do not have time for.</p>
7219
7220       </div>
7221       <div class="tags">
7222
7223
7224         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>.
7225
7226
7227       </div>
7228     </div>
7229     <div class="padding"></div>
7230
7231     <div class="entry">
7232       <div class="title">
7233         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
7234       </div>
7235       <div class="date">
7236         20th June 2011
7237       </div>
7238       <div class="body">
7239         <p>Reading
7240 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
7241 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
7242 parts of the
7243 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
7244 and
7245 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
7246 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
7247 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
7248 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
7249
7250       </div>
7251       <div class="tags">
7252
7253
7254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
7255
7256
7257       </div>
7258     </div>
7259     <div class="padding"></div>
7260
7261     <div class="entry">
7262       <div class="title">
7263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
7264       </div>
7265       <div class="date">
7266         30th April 2011
7267       </div>
7268       <div class="body">
7269         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
7270 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
7271 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
7272 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
7273 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
7274 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
7275 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
7276 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
7277 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
7278 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
7279
7280 <p>Where is it?  Visit
7281 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
7282 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
7283 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7284 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
7285
7286       </div>
7287       <div class="tags">
7288
7289
7290         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
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/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
7300       </div>
7301       <div class="date">
7302         29th April 2011
7303       </div>
7304       <div class="body">
7305         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
7306 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
7307 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
7308 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
7309 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
7310 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
7311 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
7312 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
7313 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
7314 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
7315 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
7316 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
7317 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
7318
7319 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
7320 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
7321 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
7322 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
7323 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
7324 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
7325 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
7326 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
7327 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
7328 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
7329 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
7330 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
7331 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
7332
7333 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
7334 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
7335 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
7336 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
7337 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
7338 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
7339 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
7340 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
7341 it.</p>
7342
7343 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
7344 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
7345 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
7346 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
7347 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
7348 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
7349 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
7350
7351 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
7352 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
7353 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
7354 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
7355 and range= options.</p>
7356
7357 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
7358 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
7359 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
7360 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
7361 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
7362 to best handle this.  I've noticed
7363 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
7364 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
7365 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
7366 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
7367
7368 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
7369 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
7370 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
7371 discussions instead of only
7372 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
7373 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
7374 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
7375 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
7376 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
7377 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
7378
7379       </div>
7380       <div class="tags">
7381
7382
7383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
7384
7385
7386       </div>
7387     </div>
7388     <div class="padding"></div>
7389
7390     <div class="entry">
7391       <div class="title">
7392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
7393       </div>
7394       <div class="date">
7395          6th April 2011
7396       </div>
7397       <div class="body">
7398         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
7399 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
7400 A few days ago the project
7401 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
7402 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
7403 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
7404 into Gnash.</p>
7405
7406       </div>
7407       <div class="tags">
7408
7409
7410         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7411
7412
7413       </div>
7414     </div>
7415     <div class="padding"></div>
7416
7417     <div class="entry">
7418       <div class="title">
7419         <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>
7420       </div>
7421       <div class="date">
7422          3rd April 2011
7423       </div>
7424       <div class="body">
7425         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
7426 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
7427 update in English.</p>
7428
7429 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
7430 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
7431 of the British service
7432 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
7433 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
7434 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
7435 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
7436 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
7437 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
7438 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
7439 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
7440 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
7441 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
7442 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
7443 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
7444 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
7445
7446 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
7447 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
7448 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
7449 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
7450 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
7451 public infrastructure.</p>
7452
7453 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
7454 such service?</p>
7455
7456       </div>
7457       <div class="tags">
7458
7459
7460         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>.
7461
7462
7463       </div>
7464     </div>
7465     <div class="padding"></div>
7466
7467     <div class="entry">
7468       <div class="title">
7469         <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>
7470       </div>
7471       <div class="date">
7472         28th January 2011
7473       </div>
7474       <div class="body">
7475         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
7476 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
7477 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
7478 available on the Internet, and check our locally
7479 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
7480 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
7481 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
7482 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
7483 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
7484 out which security holes were present in our free software
7485 collection.</p>
7486
7487 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
7488 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
7489 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
7490 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
7491 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
7492 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
7493 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
7494 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
7495 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
7496 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
7497 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
7498 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
7499 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
7500 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
7501 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
7502 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
7503
7504 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
7505 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
7506 check out, one could look up
7507 <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
7508 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
7509 The most recent one is
7510 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
7511 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
7512 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
7513
7514 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
7515 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
7516 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
7517 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
7518 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
7519 security issues out.</p>
7520
7521 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
7522 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
7523 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
7524 RHEL is providing
7525 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
7526 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
7527 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
7528
7529 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
7530 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
7531 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
7532 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
7533 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
7534 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
7535 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
7536 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
7537 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
7538 established soon.</p>
7539
7540 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
7541 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
7542 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
7543 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
7544 for their packages.</p>
7545
7546       </div>
7547       <div class="tags">
7548
7549
7550         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>.
7551
7552
7553       </div>
7554     </div>
7555     <div class="padding"></div>
7556
7557     <div class="entry">
7558       <div class="title">
7559         <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>
7560       </div>
7561       <div class="date">
7562         23rd January 2011
7563       </div>
7564       <div class="body">
7565         <p>In the
7566 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
7567 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
7568 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
7569 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
7570 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
7571 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
7572 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
7573 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
7574 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
7575 one of my machines like this:</p>
7576
7577 <pre>
7578 loaded modules:
7579 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
7580 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
7581 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
7582 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
7583 10de:03ec pata_amd
7584 10de:03f6 sata_nv
7585 1022:1103 k8temp
7586 109e:036e bttv
7587 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
7588 11ab:4364 sky2
7589 </pre>
7590
7591 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
7592 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
7593
7594 <pre>
7595 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
7596     echo loaded pci modules:
7597     (
7598         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
7599         for address in * ; do
7600             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7601                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7602                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7603                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7604                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
7605                     echo "$id $module"
7606                 fi
7607             fi
7608         done
7609     )
7610     echo
7611 fi
7612 </pre>
7613
7614 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
7615 mappings:</p>
7616
7617 <pre>
7618 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
7619     echo loaded usb modules:
7620     (
7621         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
7622         for address in * ; do
7623             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
7624                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
7625                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
7626                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
7627                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
7628                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
7629                         echo "$id $module"
7630                     fi
7631                 fi
7632             fi
7633         done
7634     )
7635     echo
7636 fi
7637 </pre>
7638
7639 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
7640 well.</p>
7641
7642       </div>
7643       <div class="tags">
7644
7645
7646         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>.
7647
7648
7649       </div>
7650     </div>
7651     <div class="padding"></div>
7652
7653     <div class="entry">
7654       <div class="title">
7655         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
7656       </div>
7657       <div class="date">
7658         16th January 2011
7659       </div>
7660       <div class="body">
7661         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
7662 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
7663 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
7664 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
7665 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
7666 the Wikipedia article on
7667 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
7668 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
7669 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
7670 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
7671 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
7672 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
7673 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
7674 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
7675 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
7676 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
7677 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
7678 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
7679
7680 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
7681 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
7682 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
7683 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
7684 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
7685 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
7686 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
7687 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
7688 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
7689 from last week</a>.</p>
7690
7691 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
7692 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
7693 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
7694 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
7695 was without royalties and license terms, check out
7696 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7697 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
7698
7699 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
7700 available from
7701 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
7702 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
7703 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
7704
7705 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
7706 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
7707 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
7708 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
7709
7710       </div>
7711       <div class="tags">
7712
7713
7714         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7715
7716
7717       </div>
7718     </div>
7719     <div class="padding"></div>
7720
7721     <div class="entry">
7722       <div class="title">
7723         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
7724       </div>
7725       <div class="date">
7726         12th January 2011
7727       </div>
7728       <div class="body">
7729         <p>Today I discovered
7730 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
7731 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
7732 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
7733 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
7734 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
7735 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
7736 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
7737 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
7738 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
7739 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
7740 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
7741 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
7742 on the Google announcement is available from
7743 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
7744 A good read. :)</p>
7745
7746 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
7747 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
7748 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
7749 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
7750 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
7751 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
7752 browsers support H.264, and others support
7753 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
7754 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
7755 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
7756 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
7757 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
7758 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
7759 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
7760 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
7761
7762 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
7763 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
7764 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
7765 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
7766 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
7767 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
7768 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
7769
7770 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
7771 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
7772 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
7773 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
7774 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
7775 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
7776 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
7777
7778 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
7779 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
7780 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
7781 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
7782 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
7783 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
7784 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
7785
7786 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
7787 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
7788 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
7789 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
7790 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
7791 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
7792 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
7793 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
7794 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
7795 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
7796 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
7797 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
7798 I guess time will tell.</p>
7799
7800 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
7801 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
7802 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
7803
7804       </div>
7805       <div class="tags">
7806
7807
7808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7809
7810
7811       </div>
7812     </div>
7813     <div class="padding"></div>
7814
7815     <div class="entry">
7816       <div class="title">
7817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
7818       </div>
7819       <div class="date">
7820         30th December 2010
7821       </div>
7822       <div class="body">
7823         <p>After trying to
7824 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
7825 Ogg Theora</a> to
7826 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
7827 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
7828 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
7829 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
7830 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
7831 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
7832 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
7833
7834 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
7835 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
7836 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
7837 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
7838 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
7839 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
7840 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
7841
7842 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
7843 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
7844
7845       </div>
7846       <div class="tags">
7847
7848
7849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7850
7851
7852       </div>
7853     </div>
7854     <div class="padding"></div>
7855
7856     <div class="entry">
7857       <div class="title">
7858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
7859       </div>
7860       <div class="date">
7861         27th December 2010
7862       </div>
7863       <div class="body">
7864         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
7865 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
7866 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
7867 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
7868 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
7869 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
7870 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
7871 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
7872
7873 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
7874 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
7875 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
7876 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
7877 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
7878 page</a>.</p>
7879
7880 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
7881 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
7882 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
7883 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
7884 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
7885 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
7886 specification on equal terms.</p>
7887
7888 <blockquote>
7889
7890 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
7891 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
7892 open standard:</p>
7893
7894 <ul>
7895
7896 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7897 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7898 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
7899 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
7900
7901 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7902 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
7903 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
7904 nominal fee.</li>
7905
7906 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
7907 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
7908 free basis.</li>
7909
7910 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7911
7912 </ul>
7913 </blockquote>
7914
7915 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
7916 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
7917 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
7918 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
7919 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
7920 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
7921 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
7922
7923 <blockquote>
7924
7925 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
7926
7927 <ol>
7928
7929 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
7930 tilgængelig.</li>
7931
7932 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
7933 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
7934
7935 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
7936 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
7937
7938 </ol>
7939
7940 </blockquote>
7941
7942 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
7943 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
7944
7945 <blockquote>
7946
7947 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
7948
7949 <ol>
7950
7951 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
7952 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
7953
7954 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
7955 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
7956 Standard themselves;</li>
7957
7958 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
7959 any party or in any business model;</li>
7960
7961 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
7962 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
7963 parties;</li>
7964
7965 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
7966 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
7967 parties.</li>
7968
7969 </ol>
7970
7971 </blockquote>
7972
7973 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
7974 its
7975 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
7976 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
7977
7978 <blockquote>
7979 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7980
7981 <ul>
7982
7983 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7984   democratic:
7985
7986          <ul>
7987
7988          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7989             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7990             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7991             and managed.</li>
7992
7993          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
7994             method, can be changed through input from all
7995             participants.</li>
7996
7997          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7998             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
7999
8000          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
8001             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
8002
8003          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
8004             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
8005             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
8006
8007          </ul>
8008
8009 </li>
8010
8011 </ul>
8012
8013 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
8014 <ul>
8015
8016 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
8017   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
8018   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
8019   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
8020   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
8021
8022 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
8023   a technical or economic barriers</li>
8024
8025 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
8026   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
8027   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
8028   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
8029   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
8030   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
8031   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
8032   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
8033   intended to function.</li>
8034
8035 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
8036   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
8037   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
8038
8039 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
8040   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
8041   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
8042   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
8043   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
8044   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
8045   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
8046   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
8047
8048       <ul>
8049
8050       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
8051         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
8052         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
8053
8054       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
8055         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
8056         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
8057         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
8058
8059       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
8060         licensor</li>
8061
8062       </ul>
8063 </li>
8064
8065 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
8066   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
8067   or restricted licensing terms</li>
8068
8069 </ul>
8070
8071 </blockquote>
8072
8073 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
8074 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
8075 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
8076 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
8077 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
8078 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
8079 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
8080 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
8081 Standards.</p>
8082
8083       </div>
8084       <div class="tags">
8085
8086
8087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8088
8089
8090       </div>
8091     </div>
8092     <div class="padding"></div>
8093
8094     <div class="entry">
8095       <div class="title">
8096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
8097       </div>
8098       <div class="date">
8099         25th December 2010
8100       </div>
8101       <div class="body">
8102         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
8103 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
8104
8105 <blockquote>
8106
8107 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
8108 as follows:</p>
8109
8110 <ol>
8111
8112 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
8113 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
8114 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
8115
8116 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
8117 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
8118 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
8119 parties.</li>
8120
8121 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
8122 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
8123 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
8124
8125 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
8126 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
8127
8128 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
8129
8130 </ol>
8131
8132 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
8133 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
8134 products based on the standard.</p>
8135 </blockquote>
8136
8137 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
8138 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
8139 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
8140 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
8141 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
8142 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
8143 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
8144 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
8145
8146 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
8147
8148 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
8149 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
8150 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
8151 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
8152 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
8153 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
8154 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
8155 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
8156 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
8157 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
8158 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
8159 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
8160 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
8161 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
8162
8163 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
8164
8165 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
8166 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
8167 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
8168 documentation indicating this.</p>
8169
8170 <p>According to
8171 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
8172 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
8173 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
8174 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
8175 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
8176 report is correct.</p>
8177
8178 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
8179
8180 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
8181 container format</a> and both the
8182 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
8183 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
8184 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
8185
8186 <blockquote>
8187
8188 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
8189 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
8190 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
8191 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
8192 specification compliance.
8193
8194 </blockquote>
8195
8196 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
8197 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
8198 this is the term:<p>
8199
8200 <blockquote>
8201
8202 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
8203 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
8204 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
8205 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
8206 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
8207 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
8208 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
8209 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
8210 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
8211 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
8212 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
8213 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
8214
8215 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
8216 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
8217 </blockquote>
8218
8219 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
8220 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
8221 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
8222 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
8223 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
8224
8225 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
8226
8227 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
8228 Theora format.
8229 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
8230 and
8231 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
8232 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
8233 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
8234 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
8235 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
8236 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
8237 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
8238 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
8239
8240 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
8241
8242 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
8243
8244 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8245
8246 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
8247 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
8248 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
8249 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
8250 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
8251 this.</p>
8252
8253 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
8254 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
8255
8256       </div>
8257       <div class="tags">
8258
8259
8260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8261
8262
8263       </div>
8264     </div>
8265     <div class="padding"></div>
8266
8267     <div class="entry">
8268       <div class="title">
8269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
8270       </div>
8271       <div class="date">
8272         25th December 2010
8273       </div>
8274       <div class="body">
8275         <p>A few days ago
8276 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
8277 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
8278 2.0 of
8279 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
8280 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
8281 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
8282 Nothing very surprising there, given
8283 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
8284 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
8285 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
8286 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
8287 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
8288 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
8289 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
8290 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
8291 standard definition from its content.</p>
8292
8293 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
8294 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
8295 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
8296 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
8297 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
8298 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
8299 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
8300 background information about that story is available in
8301 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
8302 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
8303
8304 <blockquote>
8305 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
8306 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
8307 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
8308
8309 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
8310
8311 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
8312
8313 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
8314
8315 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
8316
8317 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
8318
8319 <p>
8320 <ul>
8321 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
8322 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
8323 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
8324 </ul>
8325 </p>
8326
8327 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
8328
8329 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
8330
8331 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
8332
8333 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
8334
8335 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
8336
8337
8338 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
8339 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
8340 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
8341 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
8342 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
8343 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
8344
8345 </p>
8346
8347 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
8348
8349 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
8350
8351 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
8352
8353 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
8354
8355 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
8356
8357 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
8358
8359 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
8360
8361 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
8362
8363 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
8364
8365 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
8366
8367 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
8368
8369 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
8370
8371 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
8372
8373 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
8374
8375 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
8376
8377 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
8378
8379 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
8380
8381 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
8382
8383 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
8384
8385 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
8386
8387 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
8388
8389 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
8390
8391 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
8392
8393 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
8394
8395 <p>On security:</p>
8396
8397 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
8398
8399 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
8400
8401 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
8402
8403 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
8404
8405 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
8406
8407 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
8408
8409 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
8410
8411 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
8412
8413 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
8414
8415 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
8416
8417 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
8418
8419 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
8420
8421 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
8422
8423 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
8424
8425 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
8426
8427 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
8428
8429 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
8430
8431 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
8432
8433 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
8434
8435 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
8436
8437 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
8438
8439 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
8440
8441 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
8442
8443 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
8444
8445 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
8446
8447 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
8448
8449 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
8450
8451 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
8452
8453 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
8454
8455 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
8456
8457 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
8458
8459 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
8460
8461 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
8462
8463 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
8464
8465 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
8466
8467 <p>Cordially,<br>
8468 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
8469 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
8470 </blockquote>
8471
8472       </div>
8473       <div class="tags">
8474
8475
8476         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8477
8478
8479       </div>
8480     </div>
8481     <div class="padding"></div>
8482
8483     <div class="entry">
8484       <div class="title">
8485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
8486       </div>
8487       <div class="date">
8488         25th December 2010
8489       </div>
8490       <div class="body">
8491         <p>Half a year ago I
8492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
8493 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
8494 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
8495 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
8496
8497 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
8498 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
8499 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
8500 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
8501 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
8502 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
8503 got such a great test tool available.</p>
8504
8505       </div>
8506       <div class="tags">
8507
8508
8509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
8510
8511
8512       </div>
8513     </div>
8514     <div class="padding"></div>
8515
8516     <div class="entry">
8517       <div class="title">
8518         <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>
8519       </div>
8520       <div class="date">
8521         22nd December 2010
8522       </div>
8523       <div class="body">
8524         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
8525 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
8526 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
8527 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
8528 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
8529 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
8530 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
8531 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
8532 university.</p>
8533
8534 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
8535 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
8536 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
8537 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
8538 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
8539 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
8540 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
8541 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
8542
8543 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
8544 I perform on a new model.</p>
8545
8546 <ul>
8547
8548 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
8549 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
8550 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
8551
8552 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
8553 installation, X.org is working.</li>
8554
8555 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
8556 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
8557 reported by the program.</li>
8558
8559 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
8560 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
8561 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
8562 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
8563 normally test this by playing
8564 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
8565 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
8566
8567 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
8568 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8569
8570 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
8571 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
8572
8573 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
8574 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
8575
8576 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
8577 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
8578 few.</li>
8579
8580 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
8581 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
8582 notice this.</li>
8583
8584 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
8585 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
8586 resume.</li>
8587
8588 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
8589 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
8590 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
8591 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
8592 not.</li>
8593
8594 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
8595 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
8596 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
8597 existence.</li>
8598
8599 </ul>
8600
8601 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
8602 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
8603 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
8604 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
8605 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
8606 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
8607 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
8608 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
8609
8610       </div>
8611       <div class="tags">
8612
8613
8614         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>.
8615
8616
8617       </div>
8618     </div>
8619     <div class="padding"></div>
8620
8621     <div class="entry">
8622       <div class="title">
8623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
8624       </div>
8625       <div class="date">
8626         11th December 2010
8627       </div>
8628       <div class="body">
8629         <p>As I continue to explore
8630 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
8631 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
8632 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
8633
8634 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
8635 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
8636 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
8637 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
8638 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
8639 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
8640 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
8641 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
8642 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
8643 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
8644 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
8645 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
8646 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
8647 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
8648 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
8649 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
8650 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
8651 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
8652 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
8653 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
8654
8655 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
8656 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
8657 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
8658 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
8659 If the Skolelinux foundation
8660 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
8661 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
8662 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
8663 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
8664 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
8665 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
8666 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
8667 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
8668
8669 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
8670 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
8671 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
8672 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
8673 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
8674 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
8675 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
8676 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
8677 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
8678 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
8679 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
8680 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
8681 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
8682 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
8683 currencies.</p>
8684
8685 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
8686 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
8687 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
8688 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
8689 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
8690 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
8691 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
8692 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
8693 BitCoins.  Check out
8694 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
8695 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
8696 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
8697 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
8698 yet.</p>
8699
8700 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
8701 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
8702 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
8703 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
8704 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
8705
8706       </div>
8707       <div class="tags">
8708
8709
8710         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>.
8711
8712
8713       </div>
8714     </div>
8715     <div class="padding"></div>
8716
8717     <div class="entry">
8718       <div class="title">
8719         <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>
8720       </div>
8721       <div class="date">
8722         10th December 2010
8723       </div>
8724       <div class="body">
8725         <p>With this weeks lawless
8726 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
8727 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
8728 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
8729 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
8730 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
8731 A blog post from
8732 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
8733 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
8734 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
8735 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
8736 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
8737 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
8738 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
8739
8740 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
8741 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
8742 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
8743 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
8744 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
8745 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
8746 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
8747 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
8748 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
8749 Debian</a> soon.</p>
8750
8751 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
8752 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
8753 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
8754 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
8755 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
8756 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
8757 you can even get
8758 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
8759 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
8760 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
8761 on the current exchange rates.</p>
8762
8763 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
8764 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
8765 donations to the address
8766 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
8767
8768       </div>
8769       <div class="tags">
8770
8771
8772         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>.
8773
8774
8775       </div>
8776     </div>
8777     <div class="padding"></div>
8778
8779     <div class="entry">
8780       <div class="title">
8781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="date">
8784          9th December 2010
8785       </div>
8786       <div class="body">
8787         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
8788 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
8789 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
8790 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
8791 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
8792 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
8793 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
8794 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
8795 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
8796 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
8797 operational.</p>
8798
8799 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
8800 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
8801 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
8802 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
8803 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
8804 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
8805 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
8806
8807       </div>
8808       <div class="tags">
8809
8810
8811         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
8812
8813
8814       </div>
8815     </div>
8816     <div class="padding"></div>
8817
8818     <div class="entry">
8819       <div class="title">
8820         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
8821       </div>
8822       <div class="date">
8823         29th November 2010
8824       </div>
8825       <div class="body">
8826         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8827 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
8828 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
8829 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
8830 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
8831 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
8832
8833 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
8834 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
8835 will hold its
8836 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
8837 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
8838 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
8839 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
8840 vote this year.</p>
8841
8842       </div>
8843       <div class="tags">
8844
8845
8846         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8847
8848
8849       </div>
8850     </div>
8851     <div class="padding"></div>
8852
8853     <div class="entry">
8854       <div class="title">
8855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
8856       </div>
8857       <div class="date">
8858         27th November 2010
8859       </div>
8860       <div class="body">
8861         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
8862 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
8863 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
8864 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
8865 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
8866 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
8867 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
8868 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
8869
8870 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
8871 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
8872 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
8873 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
8874 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
8875 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
8876 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
8877 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
8878 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
8879 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
8880 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
8881
8882 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
8883 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
8884 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
8885 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
8886 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
8887 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
8888 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
8889 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
8890 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
8891 what is going on.</p>
8892
8893       </div>
8894       <div class="tags">
8895
8896
8897         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>.
8898
8899
8900       </div>
8901     </div>
8902     <div class="padding"></div>
8903
8904     <div class="entry">
8905       <div class="title">
8906         <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>
8907       </div>
8908       <div class="date">
8909         22nd November 2010
8910       </div>
8911       <div class="body">
8912         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
8913 upgrade testing of the
8914 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8915 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
8916 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
8917 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
8918
8919 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8920
8921 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8922
8923 <blockquote><p>
8924   apache2.2-bin
8925   aptdaemon
8926   baobab
8927   binfmt-support
8928   browser-plugin-gnash
8929   cheese-common
8930   cli-common
8931   cups-pk-helper
8932   dmz-cursor-theme
8933   empathy
8934   empathy-common
8935   freedesktop-sound-theme
8936   freeglut3
8937   gconf-defaults-service
8938   gdm-themes
8939   gedit-plugins
8940   geoclue
8941   geoclue-hostip
8942   geoclue-localnet
8943   geoclue-manual
8944   geoclue-yahoo
8945   gnash
8946   gnash-common
8947   gnome
8948   gnome-backgrounds
8949   gnome-cards-data
8950   gnome-codec-install
8951   gnome-core
8952   gnome-desktop-environment
8953   gnome-disk-utility
8954   gnome-screenshot
8955   gnome-search-tool
8956   gnome-session-canberra
8957   gnome-system-log
8958   gnome-themes-extras
8959   gnome-themes-more
8960   gnome-user-share
8961   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8962   gstreamer0.10-tools
8963   gtk2-engines
8964   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8965   gtk2-engines-smooth
8966   hamster-applet
8967   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8968   libapr1
8969   libaprutil1
8970   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8971   libaprutil1-ldap
8972   libart2.0-cil
8973   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8974   libboost-python1.42.0
8975   libboost-thread1.42.0
8976   libchamplain-0.4-0
8977   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8978   libcheese-gtk18
8979   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8980   libcryptui0
8981   libdiscid0
8982   libelf1
8983   libepc-1.0-2
8984   libepc-common
8985   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8986   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8987   libfreerdp0
8988   libgconf2.0-cil
8989   libgdata-common
8990   libgdata7
8991   libgdu-gtk0
8992   libgee2
8993   libgeoclue0
8994   libgexiv2-0
8995   libgif4
8996   libglade2.0-cil
8997   libglib2.0-cil
8998   libgmime2.4-cil
8999   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9000   libgnome2.24-cil
9001   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
9002   libgpod-common
9003   libgpod4
9004   libgtk2.0-cil
9005   libgtkglext1
9006   libgtksourceview2.0-common
9007   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9008   libmono-addins0.2-cil
9009   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
9010   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9011   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
9012   libmono-posix2.0-cil
9013   libmono-security2.0-cil
9014   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9015   libmono-system2.0-cil
9016   libmtp8
9017   libmusicbrainz3-6
9018   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
9019   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
9020   libopal3.6.8
9021   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
9022   libpt2.6.7
9023   libpython2.6
9024   librpm1
9025   librpmio1
9026   libsdl1.2debian
9027   libsrtp0
9028   libssh-4
9029   libtelepathy-farsight0
9030   libtelepathy-glib0
9031   libtidy-0.99-0
9032   media-player-info
9033   mesa-utils
9034   mono-2.0-gac
9035   mono-gac
9036   mono-runtime
9037   nautilus-sendto
9038   nautilus-sendto-empathy
9039   p7zip-full
9040   pkg-config
9041   python-aptdaemon
9042   python-aptdaemon-gtk
9043   python-axiom
9044   python-beautifulsoup
9045   python-bugbuddy
9046   python-clientform
9047   python-coherence
9048   python-configobj
9049   python-crypto
9050   python-cupshelpers
9051   python-elementtree
9052   python-epsilon
9053   python-evolution
9054   python-feedparser
9055   python-gdata
9056   python-gdbm
9057   python-gst0.10
9058   python-gtkglext1
9059   python-gtksourceview2
9060   python-httplib2
9061   python-louie
9062   python-mako
9063   python-markupsafe
9064   python-mechanize
9065   python-nevow
9066   python-notify
9067   python-opengl
9068   python-openssl
9069   python-pam
9070   python-pkg-resources
9071   python-pyasn1
9072   python-pysqlite2
9073   python-rdflib
9074   python-serial
9075   python-tagpy
9076   python-twisted-bin
9077   python-twisted-conch
9078   python-twisted-core
9079   python-twisted-web
9080   python-utidylib
9081   python-webkit
9082   python-xdg
9083   python-zope.interface
9084   remmina
9085   remmina-plugin-data
9086   remmina-plugin-rdp
9087   remmina-plugin-vnc
9088   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9089   rhythmbox-plugins
9090   rpm-common
9091   rpm2cpio
9092   seahorse-plugins
9093   shotwell
9094   software-center
9095   system-config-printer-udev
9096   telepathy-gabble
9097   telepathy-mission-control-5
9098   telepathy-salut
9099   tomboy
9100   totem
9101   totem-coherence
9102   totem-mozilla
9103   totem-plugins
9104   transmission-common
9105   xdg-user-dirs
9106   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
9107   xserver-xephyr
9108 </p></blockquote>
9109
9110 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9111
9112 <blockquote><p>
9113   cheese
9114   ekiga
9115   eog
9116   epiphany-extensions
9117   evolution-exchange
9118   fast-user-switch-applet
9119   file-roller
9120   gcalctool
9121   gconf-editor
9122   gdm
9123   gedit
9124   gedit-common
9125   gnome-games
9126   gnome-games-data
9127   gnome-nettool
9128   gnome-system-tools
9129   gnome-themes
9130   gnuchess
9131   gucharmap
9132   guile-1.8-libs
9133   libavahi-ui0
9134   libdmx1
9135   libgalago3
9136   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9137   libgtksourceview2.0-0
9138   liblircclient0
9139   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
9140   libspeexdsp1
9141   libsvga1
9142   rhythmbox
9143   seahorse
9144   sound-juicer
9145   system-config-printer
9146   totem-common
9147   transmission-gtk
9148   vinagre
9149   vino
9150 </p></blockquote>
9151
9152 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9153
9154 <blockquote><p>
9155   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9156 </p></blockquote>
9157
9158 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9159
9160 <blockquote><p>
9161 [nothing]
9162 </p></blockquote>
9163
9164 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9165
9166 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9167
9168 <blockquote><p>
9169   ksmserver
9170 </p></blockquote>
9171
9172 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9173
9174 <blockquote><p>
9175   kwin
9176   network-manager-kde
9177 </p></blockquote>
9178
9179 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9180
9181 <blockquote><p>
9182   arts
9183   dolphin
9184   freespacenotifier
9185   google-gadgets-gst
9186   google-gadgets-xul
9187   kappfinder
9188   kcalc
9189   kcharselect
9190   kde-core
9191   kde-plasma-desktop
9192   kde-standard
9193   kde-window-manager
9194   kdeartwork
9195   kdeartwork-emoticons
9196   kdeartwork-style
9197   kdeartwork-theme-icon
9198   kdebase
9199   kdebase-apps
9200   kdebase-workspace
9201   kdebase-workspace-bin
9202   kdebase-workspace-data
9203   kdeeject
9204   kdelibs
9205   kdeplasma-addons
9206   kdeutils
9207   kdewallpapers
9208   kdf
9209   kfloppy
9210   kgpg
9211   khelpcenter4
9212   kinfocenter
9213   konq-plugins-l10n
9214   konqueror-nsplugins
9215   kscreensaver
9216   kscreensaver-xsavers
9217   ktimer
9218   kwrite
9219   libgle3
9220   libkde4-ruby1.8
9221   libkonq5
9222   libkonq5-templates
9223   libnetpbm10
9224   libplasma-ruby
9225   libplasma-ruby1.8
9226   libqt4-ruby1.8
9227   marble-data
9228   marble-plugins
9229   netpbm
9230   nuvola-icon-theme
9231   plasma-dataengines-workspace
9232   plasma-desktop
9233   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
9234   plasma-runners-addons
9235   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
9236   plasma-scriptengine-python
9237   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
9238   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
9239   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
9240   plasma-scriptengines
9241   plasma-wallpapers-addons
9242   plasma-widget-folderview
9243   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9244   ruby
9245   sweeper
9246   update-notifier-kde
9247   xscreensaver-data-extra
9248   xscreensaver-gl
9249   xscreensaver-gl-extra
9250   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9251 </p></blockquote>
9252
9253 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9254
9255 <blockquote><p>
9256   ark
9257   google-gadgets-common
9258   google-gadgets-qt
9259   htdig
9260   kate
9261   kdebase-bin
9262   kdebase-data
9263   kdepasswd
9264   kfind
9265   klipper
9266   konq-plugins
9267   konqueror
9268   ksysguard
9269   ksysguardd
9270   libarchive1
9271   libcln6
9272   libeet1
9273   libeina-svn-06
9274   libggadget-1.0-0b
9275   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
9276   libgps19
9277   libkdecorations4
9278   libkephal4
9279   libkonq4
9280   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
9281   libkscreensaver5
9282   libksgrd4
9283   libksignalplotter4
9284   libkunitconversion4
9285   libkwineffects1a
9286   libmarblewidget4
9287   libntrack-qt4-1
9288   libntrack0
9289   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
9290   libplasmaclock4a
9291   libplasmagenericshell4
9292   libprocesscore4a
9293   libprocessui4a
9294   libqalculate5
9295   libqedje0a
9296   libqtruby4shared2
9297   libqzion0a
9298   libruby1.8
9299   libscim8c2a
9300   libsmokekdecore4-3
9301   libsmokekdeui4-3
9302   libsmokekfile3
9303   libsmokekhtml3
9304   libsmokekio3
9305   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
9306   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
9307   libsmokekparts3
9308   libsmokektexteditor3
9309   libsmokekutils3
9310   libsmokenepomuk3
9311   libsmokephonon3
9312   libsmokeplasma3
9313   libsmokeqtcore4-3
9314   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
9315   libsmokeqtgui4-3
9316   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
9317   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
9318   libsmokeqtscript4-3
9319   libsmokeqtsql4-3
9320   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
9321   libsmokeqttest4-3
9322   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
9323   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
9324   libsmokeqtxml4-3
9325   libsmokesolid3
9326   libsmokesoprano3
9327   libtaskmanager4a
9328   libtidy-0.99-0
9329   libweather-ion4a
9330   libxklavier16
9331   libxxf86misc1
9332   okteta
9333   oxygencursors
9334   plasma-dataengines-addons
9335   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
9336   plasma-widget-lancelot
9337   plasma-widgets-addons
9338   plasma-widgets-workspace
9339   polkit-kde-1
9340   ruby1.8
9341   systemsettings
9342   update-notifier-common
9343 </p></blockquote>
9344
9345 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
9346 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
9347 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
9348 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
9349
9350       </div>
9351       <div class="tags">
9352
9353
9354         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>.
9355
9356
9357       </div>
9358     </div>
9359     <div class="padding"></div>
9360
9361     <div class="entry">
9362       <div class="title">
9363         <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>
9364       </div>
9365       <div class="date">
9366         22nd November 2010
9367       </div>
9368       <div class="body">
9369         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
9370 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
9371 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
9372 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
9373 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
9374 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
9375 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
9376 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
9377 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
9378
9379 <p>I found
9380 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
9381 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
9382 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
9383 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
9384 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
9385 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
9386
9387 <pre>
9388 #!/bin/sh
9389
9390 # Based on
9391 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
9392
9393 set -e
9394 set -x
9395
9396 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
9397     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
9398     exit 1
9399 else
9400     host="$1"
9401 fi
9402
9403 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
9404     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
9405     exit 1
9406 fi
9407
9408 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
9409 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9410 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
9411 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
9412
9413 img=$host.img
9414 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
9415 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
9416
9417 parted $img mklabel msdos
9418 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
9419 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
9420 parted $img set 1 boot on
9421
9422 modprobe dm-mod
9423 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
9424 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
9425
9426 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
9427 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
9428 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
9429
9430 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
9431 losetup -d /dev/loop0
9432 </pre>
9433
9434 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
9435 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
9436
9437 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
9438 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
9439 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
9440 seem to work just fine.</p>
9441
9442       </div>
9443       <div class="tags">
9444
9445
9446         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>.
9447
9448
9449       </div>
9450     </div>
9451     <div class="padding"></div>
9452
9453     <div class="entry">
9454       <div class="title">
9455         <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>
9456       </div>
9457       <div class="date">
9458         20th November 2010
9459       </div>
9460       <div class="body">
9461         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
9462 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9463 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
9464 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
9465
9466 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
9467 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
9468 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
9469
9470 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9471
9472 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9473
9474 <blockquote><p>
9475   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
9476   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
9477   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
9478   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
9479   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
9480   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
9481   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
9482   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
9483   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
9484   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
9485   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9486   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9487   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
9488   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
9489   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
9490   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
9491   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9492   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
9493   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9494   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
9495   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
9496   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9497   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
9498   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
9499   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
9500   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9501   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9502   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
9503   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9504   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
9505   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
9506   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
9507   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
9508   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
9509   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
9510   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
9511   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
9512   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
9513   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
9514   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
9515   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
9516   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
9517   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
9518   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
9519   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
9520   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
9521   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
9522   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
9523   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
9524   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
9525   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
9526   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
9527   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
9528   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
9529   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
9530   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
9531   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
9532   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
9533   zip
9534 </p></blockquote>
9535
9536 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
9537
9538 <blockquote><p>
9539   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
9540   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
9541   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
9542   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
9543   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
9544   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
9545   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
9546   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
9547   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
9548   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
9549   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
9550   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
9551   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
9552   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
9553   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
9554   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
9555   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9556   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
9557   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
9558   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
9559   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
9560   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
9561   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
9562   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
9563   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
9564   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
9565   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
9566   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
9567   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
9568 </p></blockquote>
9569
9570 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9571
9572 <blockquote><p>
9573   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
9574 </p></blockquote>
9575
9576 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9577
9578 <blockquote><p>
9579 [nothing]
9580 </p></blockquote>
9581
9582 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
9583
9584 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9585
9586 <blockquote><p>
9587   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
9588   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
9589   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
9590   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
9591   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
9592   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
9593   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
9594   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
9595   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
9596   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
9597   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
9598   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
9599   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
9600   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
9601   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
9602   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
9603   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
9604   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
9605   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
9606   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
9607   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
9608   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
9609   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
9610   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
9611   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
9612   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
9613   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
9614   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
9615   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
9616   ttf-sazanami-gothic
9617 </p></blockquote>
9618
9619 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
9620
9621 <blockquote><p>
9622   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
9623   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
9624   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
9625   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
9626   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
9627   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
9628   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
9629   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
9630   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
9631   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
9632   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
9633   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
9634   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
9635   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
9636   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
9637   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
9638   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
9639   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
9640   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
9641   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
9642   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
9643   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
9644   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
9645   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
9646   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
9647   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
9648   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
9649   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
9650   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
9651   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
9652   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
9653   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
9654   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
9655 </p></blockquote>
9656
9657 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
9658
9659 <blockquote><p>
9660   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
9661   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
9662   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
9663   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
9664   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
9665   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
9666   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
9667 </p></blockquote>
9668
9669 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
9670
9671 <blockquote><p>
9672   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
9673 </p></blockquote>
9674
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="tags">
9677
9678
9679         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>.
9680
9681
9682       </div>
9683     </div>
9684     <div class="padding"></div>
9685
9686     <div class="entry">
9687       <div class="title">
9688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="date">
9691         20th November 2010
9692       </div>
9693       <div class="body">
9694         <p>Answering
9695 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
9696 call from the Gnash project</a> for
9697 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
9698 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
9699 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
9700 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
9701 releases out more often.</p>
9702
9703 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
9704 I have considered setting up a <a
9705 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
9706 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
9707 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
9708 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
9709 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
9710 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
9711 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
9712 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
9713 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
9714 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
9715 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
9716 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
9717
9718       </div>
9719       <div class="tags">
9720
9721
9722         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>.
9723
9724
9725       </div>
9726     </div>
9727     <div class="padding"></div>
9728
9729     <div class="entry">
9730       <div class="title">
9731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
9732       </div>
9733       <div class="date">
9734          9th November 2010
9735       </div>
9736       <div class="body">
9737         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
9738
9739 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
9740 3D linked in from
9741 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
9742 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
9743
9744       </div>
9745       <div class="tags">
9746
9747
9748         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>.
9749
9750
9751       </div>
9752     </div>
9753     <div class="padding"></div>
9754
9755     <div class="entry">
9756       <div class="title">
9757         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
9758       </div>
9759       <div class="date">
9760          7th November 2010
9761       </div>
9762       <div class="body">
9763         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
9764 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
9765 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
9766 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
9767 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
9768 working using this DVD.</p>
9769
9770 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
9771 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
9772 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
9773 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
9774 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
9775 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
9776 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
9777
9778 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
9779 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
9780 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
9781 Debian archive.</p>
9782
9783 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
9784 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
9785 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
9786 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
9787 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
9788 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
9789 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
9790 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
9791 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
9792 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
9793 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
9794 free X driver should work.</p>
9795
9796 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
9797 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
9798 DVD more useful again.</p>
9799
9800       </div>
9801       <div class="tags">
9802
9803
9804         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9805
9806
9807       </div>
9808     </div>
9809     <div class="padding"></div>
9810
9811     <div class="entry">
9812       <div class="title">
9813         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
9814       </div>
9815       <div class="date">
9816         24th October 2010
9817       </div>
9818       <div class="body">
9819         <p>Some updates.</p>
9820
9821 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
9822 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
9823 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
9824 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
9825 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
9826 :)</p>
9827
9828 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
9829 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
9830 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
9831 It is called
9832 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
9833 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
9834 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
9835 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
9836 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
9837 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
9838
9839 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
9840 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
9841 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
9842 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
9843 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
9844 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
9845 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
9846 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
9847 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
9848 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
9849
9850       </div>
9851       <div class="tags">
9852
9853
9854         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>.
9855
9856
9857       </div>
9858     </div>
9859     <div class="padding"></div>
9860
9861     <div class="entry">
9862       <div class="title">
9863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
9864       </div>
9865       <div class="date">
9866         19th October 2010
9867       </div>
9868       <div class="body">
9869         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
9870 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
9871 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
9872 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
9873 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
9874 AVM2 flash files.</p>
9875
9876 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
9877 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
9878 following text:</P>
9879
9880 <p><blockquote>
9881
9882   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
9883   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
9884
9885   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
9886
9887   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
9888
9889   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
9890   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
9891   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
9892   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
9893   days. The project web page is available from
9894   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
9895   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
9896   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
9897
9898   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
9899   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
9900   to get this to happen.</p>
9901
9902   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
9903   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
9904
9905 </blockquote></p>
9906
9907 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
9908 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
9909 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
9910 :)</p>
9911
9912       </div>
9913       <div class="tags">
9914
9915
9916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9917
9918
9919       </div>
9920     </div>
9921     <div class="padding"></div>
9922
9923     <div class="entry">
9924       <div class="title">
9925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="date">
9928          9th October 2010
9929       </div>
9930       <div class="body">
9931         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
9932 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
9933 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
9934 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
9935 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
9936 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
9937 robots.</p>
9938
9939 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
9940 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
9941 a few less important features too.</p>
9942
9943 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
9944 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
9945 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
9946 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
9947
9948 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
9949 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
9950 source or binary package:</p>
9951
9952 <p><ul>
9953 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
9954 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
9955 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
9956 </ul></p>
9957
9958 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
9959 please let me know.</p>
9960
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="tags">
9963
9964
9965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9966
9967
9968       </div>
9969     </div>
9970     <div class="padding"></div>
9971
9972     <div class="entry">
9973       <div class="title">
9974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
9975       </div>
9976       <div class="date">
9977          3rd October 2010
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="body">
9980         <p><ul>
9981
9982 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
9983 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
9984
9985 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
9986 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
9987 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
9988
9989 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
9990 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
9991 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
9992 simple setup.
9993
9994 </ul></p>
9995
9996       </div>
9997       <div class="tags">
9998
9999
10000         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10001
10002
10003       </div>
10004     </div>
10005     <div class="padding"></div>
10006
10007     <div class="entry">
10008       <div class="title">
10009         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
10010       </div>
10011       <div class="date">
10012          9th September 2010
10013       </div>
10014       <div class="body">
10015         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
10016 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
10017 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
10018 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
10019 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
10020 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
10021 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
10022 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
10023 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
10024
10025 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
10026 written:</p>
10027
10028 <blockquote>
10029 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
10030 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
10031 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
10032 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
10033 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
10034
10035 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
10036 standard.</p>
10037 </blockquote>
10038
10039 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
10040 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
10041 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
10042 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
10043
10044 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
10045 read
10046 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
10047 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
10048 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
10049 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
10050 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
10051 the issue.  The solution is to support the
10052 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
10053 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
10054 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
10055
10056       </div>
10057       <div class="tags">
10058
10059
10060         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10061
10062
10063       </div>
10064     </div>
10065     <div class="padding"></div>
10066
10067     <div class="entry">
10068       <div class="title">
10069         <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>
10070       </div>
10071       <div class="date">
10072          4th September 2010
10073       </div>
10074       <div class="body">
10075         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
10076 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10077 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
10078 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
10079 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
10080 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10081 installed.</p>
10082
10083 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
10084 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
10085 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
10086 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
10087 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10088 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
10089 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
10090 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
10091 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
10092
10093 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
10094 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
10095 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
10096 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
10097 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
10098 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
10099 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
10100 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
10101 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
10102 pages they want to visit.</p>
10103
10104 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
10105 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
10106 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
10107 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
10108 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
10109 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
10110 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
10111 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
10112 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
10113 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
10114 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
10115
10116       </div>
10117       <div class="tags">
10118
10119
10120         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>.
10121
10122
10123       </div>
10124     </div>
10125     <div class="padding"></div>
10126
10127     <div class="entry">
10128       <div class="title">
10129         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
10130       </div>
10131       <div class="date">
10132          1st September 2010
10133       </div>
10134       <div class="body">
10135         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
10136 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
10137 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
10138 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
10139 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
10140 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
10141 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
10142 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
10143 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
10144 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
10145 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
10146 drive around.</p>
10147
10148 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
10149 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
10150
10151 <p><pre>
10152 use Spykee;
10153 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
10154 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
10155 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
10156 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
10157 $spykee->left();
10158 sleep 2;
10159 $spykee->right();
10160 sleep 2;
10161 $spykee->forward();
10162 sleep 2;
10163 $spykee->back();
10164 sleep 2;
10165 $spykee->stop();
10166 </pre></p>
10167
10168 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
10169 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
10170 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
10171 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
10172 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
10173 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
10174 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
10175 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
10176 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
10177 going. :).</p>
10178
10179 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
10180 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
10181 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
10182 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
10183
10184       </div>
10185       <div class="tags">
10186
10187
10188         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10189
10190
10191       </div>
10192     </div>
10193     <div class="padding"></div>
10194
10195     <div class="entry">
10196       <div class="title">
10197         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
10198       </div>
10199       <div class="date">
10200         30th August 2010
10201       </div>
10202       <div class="body">
10203         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
10204 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
10205 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
10206 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
10207 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
10208 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
10209 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
10210
10211 <pre>
10212 % ln foo bar
10213 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
10214 %
10215 </pre>
10216
10217 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
10218 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
10219 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
10220 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
10221 nevertheless. :)</p>
10222
10223 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
10224 git from
10225 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
10226
10227       </div>
10228       <div class="tags">
10229
10230
10231         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10232
10233
10234       </div>
10235     </div>
10236     <div class="padding"></div>
10237
10238     <div class="entry">
10239       <div class="title">
10240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
10241       </div>
10242       <div class="date">
10243         26th August 2010
10244       </div>
10245       <div class="body">
10246         <p>My file system sematics program
10247 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
10248 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
10249 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
10250 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
10251 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
10252 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
10253 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
10254 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
10255 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
10256 script:</p>
10257
10258 <pre>
10259 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
10260   mode_t retval = 0;
10261   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
10262   if (-1 != fd) {
10263     unlink(name);
10264     struct stat statbuf;
10265     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
10266       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
10267     }
10268     close(fd);
10269   }
10270   return retval;
10271 }
10272
10273 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
10274 int test_umask(void) {
10275   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
10276
10277   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
10278   mode_t newmode;
10279   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10280     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
10281            newmode);
10282   }
10283   umask(007);
10284   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
10285     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
10286            newmode);
10287   }
10288
10289   umask (orig_umask);
10290   return 0;
10291 }
10292
10293 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10294   [...]
10295   test_umask();
10296   return 0;
10297 }
10298 </pre>
10299
10300 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
10301
10302 <pre>
10303 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10304 info: testing symlink creation
10305 info: testing subdirectory creation
10306 info: testing fcntl locking
10307   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10308   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10309   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10310   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10311   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10312   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10313 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10314 </pre>
10315
10316 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
10317 result:</p>
10318
10319 <pre>
10320 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10321 info: testing symlink creation
10322 info: testing subdirectory creation
10323 info: testing fcntl locking
10324   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10325   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10326   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10327   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10328   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10329   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10330 info: testing umask effect on file creation
10331   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
10332   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
10333 </pre>
10334
10335 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
10336 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
10337 directory.</p>
10338
10339 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
10340 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
10341
10342 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10343 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10344 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
10345
10346       </div>
10347       <div class="tags">
10348
10349
10350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10351
10352
10353       </div>
10354     </div>
10355     <div class="padding"></div>
10356
10357     <div class="entry">
10358       <div class="title">
10359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
10360       </div>
10361       <div class="date">
10362         15th August 2010
10363       </div>
10364       <div class="body">
10365         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
10366 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
10367 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
10368 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
10369 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
10370 long time.</p>
10371
10372       </div>
10373       <div class="tags">
10374
10375
10376         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10377
10378
10379       </div>
10380     </div>
10381     <div class="padding"></div>
10382
10383     <div class="entry">
10384       <div class="title">
10385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
10386       </div>
10387       <div class="date">
10388          9th August 2010
10389       </div>
10390       <div class="body">
10391         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
10392 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
10393 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
10394 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
10395 generated configuration.</p>
10396
10397 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
10398 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
10399 without any manual configuration.</p>
10400
10401 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
10402 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
10403 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
10404 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
10405 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
10406 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
10407 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
10408 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
10409 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
10410 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
10411 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
10412 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
10413 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
10414 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
10415 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
10416 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
10417 use.</p>
10418
10419 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
10420 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
10421 working properly out of the box:</p>
10422
10423 <ul>
10424 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
10425 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
10426 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
10427 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
10428 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
10429 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
10430 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
10431 </ul>
10432
10433 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
10434
10435 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
10436 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
10437 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
10438 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
10439 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
10440
10441 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
10442 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
10443 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
10444 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
10445 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
10446 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
10447 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
10448 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
10449
10450 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
10451 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
10452 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
10453 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
10454 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
10455 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
10456 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
10457 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
10458 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
10459 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
10460 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
10461 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
10462 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
10463 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
10464 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
10465 current DNS domain is used.</p>
10466
10467 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
10468 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
10469 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
10470 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
10471 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
10472 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
10473 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
10474 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
10475 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
10476 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
10477 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
10478 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
10479 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
10480
10481 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
10482 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
10483 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
10484 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
10485 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
10486 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
10487 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
10488 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
10489 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
10490 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
10491 do for now. :)</p>
10492
10493 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
10494 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
10495 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
10496 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
10497 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
10498 yet.</p>
10499
10500 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10501 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10502
10503 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
10504 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
10505 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
10506 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
10507
10508       </div>
10509       <div class="tags">
10510
10511
10512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10513
10514
10515       </div>
10516     </div>
10517     <div class="padding"></div>
10518
10519     <div class="entry">
10520       <div class="title">
10521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
10522       </div>
10523       <div class="date">
10524          8th August 2010
10525       </div>
10526       <div class="body">
10527         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
10528 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
10529 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
10530 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
10531 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
10532 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
10533 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
10534
10535 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
10536 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
10537 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
10538 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
10539 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
10540 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
10541 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
10542
10543 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
10544 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
10545 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
10546 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
10547 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
10548
10549 <pre>
10550 /*
10551  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
10552  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
10553  * directory.
10554  * License: GPL v2 or later
10555  *
10556  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
10557  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
10558 */
10559
10560 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
10561 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
10562 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
10563
10564 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
10565
10566 #include &lt;errno.h>
10567 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
10568 #include &lt;stdio.h>
10569 #include &lt;string.h>
10570 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
10571 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
10572 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
10573 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
10574 #include &lt;unistd.h>
10575
10576 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
10577 /*
10578  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
10579  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
10580  * below.
10581  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
10582  */
10583 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
10584 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
10585   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
10586 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
10587   char *zErrMsg;
10588   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10589   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
10590   unlink(name);
10591   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
10592   if( rc ){
10593     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
10594     sqlite3_close(db);
10595     return -1;
10596   }
10597
10598   /* create tables */
10599   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
10600   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
10601     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
10602     sqlite3_close(db);
10603     return -1;
10604   }
10605   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
10606   sqlite3_close(db);
10607   return 0;
10608 }
10609 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10610
10611 /*
10612  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
10613  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
10614  * done in the sqlite3 library.
10615  * See also
10616  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
10617  * POSIX specification
10618  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
10619  */
10620 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
10621   struct flock fl;
10622   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
10623   unlink(name);
10624   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
10625   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
10626
10627   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
10628   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
10629   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10630   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10631   fl.l_len    = 1;
10632   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
10633   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10634
10635   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
10636   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
10637   fl.l_len    = 510;
10638   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
10639   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10640
10641   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10642   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10643   fl.l_len    = 1;
10644   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
10645   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10646
10647   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
10648   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10649   fl.l_len    = 1;
10650   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
10651   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10652
10653   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
10654   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
10655   fl.l_len    = 510;
10656   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10657
10658   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
10659   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
10660   fl.l_len    = 2;
10661   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
10662   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
10663
10664   close(fd);
10665   return 0;
10666 }
10667
10668 /*
10669  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
10670  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
10671  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
10672  * slowing down file operations.
10673  */
10674 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
10675 #define LEVELS 5
10676   char *path = strdup("test");
10677   char *dirs[LEVELS];
10678   int level;
10679   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
10680   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
10681     char *newpath = NULL;
10682     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
10683       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
10684              path, strerror(errno));
10685       break;
10686     }
10687     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
10688     free(path);
10689     path = newpath;
10690   }
10691   return 0;
10692 }
10693
10694 /*
10695  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
10696  * KDE.
10697  */
10698 int test_symlinks(void) {
10699   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
10700   unlink("symlink");
10701   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
10702     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
10703   return 0;
10704 }
10705
10706 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
10707   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
10708   test_symlinks();
10709   test_subdirectory_creation();
10710 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
10711   test_sqlite_open();
10712 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
10713   test_gcompris_locking();
10714   return 0;
10715 }
10716 </pre>
10717
10718 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
10719 this:</p>
10720
10721 <pre>
10722 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
10723 info: testing symlink creation
10724 info: testing subdirectory creation
10725 info: sqlite worked
10726 info: testing fcntl locking
10727   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10728   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10729   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
10730   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
10731   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
10732   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
10733 </pre>
10734
10735 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
10736 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
10737 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
10738 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
10739 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
10740 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
10741 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
10742 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
10743
10744 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
10745 it. :)</p>
10746
10747 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
10748 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
10749 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
10750
10751       </div>
10752       <div class="tags">
10753
10754
10755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10756
10757
10758       </div>
10759     </div>
10760     <div class="padding"></div>
10761
10762     <div class="entry">
10763       <div class="title">
10764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
10765       </div>
10766       <div class="date">
10767          7th August 2010
10768       </div>
10769       <div class="body">
10770         <p>A few days ago, I
10771 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
10772 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
10773 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
10774 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
10775 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
10776 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
10777 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
10778 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
10779 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
10780
10781 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
10782 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
10783 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
10784 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
10785 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
10786 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
10787 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
10788 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
10789 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
10790 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
10791 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
10792 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
10793 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
10794 gave it a IP address.</p>
10795
10796 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
10797 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
10798 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
10799 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
10800 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
10801 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
10802 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
10803 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
10804
10805 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
10806 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
10807 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
10808 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
10809 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
10810 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
10811
10812 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
10813 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
10814 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
10815 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
10816 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
10817 with UID and GID values.</p>
10818
10819 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
10820 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10821
10822       </div>
10823       <div class="tags">
10824
10825
10826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10827
10828
10829       </div>
10830     </div>
10831     <div class="padding"></div>
10832
10833     <div class="entry">
10834       <div class="title">
10835         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
10836       </div>
10837       <div class="date">
10838          3rd August 2010
10839       </div>
10840       <div class="body">
10841         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
10842 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
10843 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
10844 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
10845 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
10846 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
10847 servers.</p>
10848
10849 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
10850 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
10851 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
10852 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
10853 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
10854 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
10855 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
10856 .uio.no.</p>
10857
10858 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
10859 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
10860 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
10861 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
10862 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
10863 university servers.</p>
10864
10865 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
10866 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
10867 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
10868 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
10869 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
10870 uses.</p>
10871
10872       </div>
10873       <div class="tags">
10874
10875
10876         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
10877
10878
10879       </div>
10880     </div>
10881     <div class="padding"></div>
10882
10883     <div class="entry">
10884       <div class="title">
10885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
10886       </div>
10887       <div class="date">
10888         27th July 2010
10889       </div>
10890       <div class="body">
10891         <p>I discovered this while doing
10892 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10893 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
10894 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10895 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10896 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
10897
10898 <p>An example is from todays
10899 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10900 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10901 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
10902 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10903 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10904 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10905 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
10906
10907 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
10908
10909 <blockquote><pre>
10910 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10911  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
10912   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
10913 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10914  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10915 </pre></blockquote>
10916
10917 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10918 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
10919 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10920 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10921 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10922 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10923 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10924 of dependency loops.</p>
10925
10926 <p>Thanks to
10927 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10928 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
10929 dependencies
10930 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10931 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
10932
10933 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10934 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
10935 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
10936 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10937 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10938 it.</p>
10939
10940       </div>
10941       <div class="tags">
10942
10943
10944         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>.
10945
10946
10947       </div>
10948     </div>
10949     <div class="padding"></div>
10950
10951     <div class="entry">
10952       <div class="title">
10953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
10954       </div>
10955       <div class="date">
10956         27th July 2010
10957       </div>
10958       <div class="body">
10959         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
10960 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
10961 completed.</p>
10962
10963 <blockquote>
10964 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
10965 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
10966 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
10967 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
10968 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
10969 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
10970 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
10971 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
10972
10973 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
10974 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
10975 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
10976
10977 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
10978 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
10979 much.</p>
10980
10981 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
10982
10983 <ul>
10984 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
10985 <ul>
10986   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
10987          combination with some new artwork
10988   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
10989   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
10990   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
10991   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
10992   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
10993   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
10994   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
10995   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
10996   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
10997 </ul></li>
10998 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
10999     Enabled for:
11000 <ul>
11001   <li>PAM
11002   <li>LDAP
11003   <li>IMAP
11004   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
11005 </ul>
11006 </li>
11007 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
11008 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
11009     fetched from LDAP.</li>
11010 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
11011 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
11012 </ul>
11013 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
11014
11015 <ul>
11016 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
11017     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
11018     for testing.</li>
11019 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
11020     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
11021     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
11022 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
11023 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
11024 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
11025 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
11026     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
11027 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
11028     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
11029     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
11030 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
11031     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
11032     and help out with translations.</li>
11033 </ul>
11034
11035 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
11036
11037 <ul>
11038 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
11039 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
11040 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11041 </ul>
11042 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
11043
11044 <ul>
11045 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
11046 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
11047 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11048 </ul>
11049
11050 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
11051 get closer to the final release.</p>
11052
11053 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
11054
11055 <ul>
11056 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11057 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11058 </ul>
11059
11060 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
11061 <ul>
11062 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
11063 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
11064 </ul>
11065 <p>How to report bugs:
11066 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
11067
11068 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
11069 </blockquote>
11070
11071       </div>
11072       <div class="tags">
11073
11074
11075         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
11076
11077
11078       </div>
11079     </div>
11080     <div class="padding"></div>
11081
11082     <div class="entry">
11083       <div class="title">
11084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
11085       </div>
11086       <div class="date">
11087         25th July 2010
11088       </div>
11089       <div class="body">
11090         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
11091 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
11092 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
11093 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
11094 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
11095
11096 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
11097 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
11098 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
11099 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
11100 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
11101 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
11102 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
11103
11104 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
11105 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
11106 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
11107 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
11108 up. :)</p>
11109
11110 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
11111 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
11112 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
11113
11114 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
11115 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
11116 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
11117 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
11118 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
11119 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
11120 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
11121 release another day.</p>
11122
11123 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
11124 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11125
11126       </div>
11127       <div class="tags">
11128
11129
11130         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
11131
11132
11133       </div>
11134     </div>
11135     <div class="padding"></div>
11136
11137     <div class="entry">
11138       <div class="title">
11139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
11140       </div>
11141       <div class="date">
11142         18th July 2010
11143       </div>
11144       <div class="body">
11145         <p>Thanks to
11146 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
11147 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
11148 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
11149 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
11150 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
11151 only available from the development server, until more experience is
11152 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
11153
11154 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
11155 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
11156 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
11157 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
11158 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
11159 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
11160 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
11161
11162       </div>
11163       <div class="tags">
11164
11165
11166         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
11167
11168
11169       </div>
11170     </div>
11171     <div class="padding"></div>
11172
11173     <div class="entry">
11174       <div class="title">
11175         <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>
11176       </div>
11177       <div class="date">
11178         17th July 2010
11179       </div>
11180       <div class="body">
11181         <p>This is a
11182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
11183 on my
11184 <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
11185 work</a> on
11186 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
11187 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
11188
11189 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11190 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11191 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
11192 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
11193
11194 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11195 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11196 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11197
11198 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11199
11200 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11201 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11202 the web.
11203
11204 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11205 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11206 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11207 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11208 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11209 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11210
11211 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11212 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11213 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11214 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11215 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11216 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
11217 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11218 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11219 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11220 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11221 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11222 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11223 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11224 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11225 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11226 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11227
11228 <blockquote><pre>
11229 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11230   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11231   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11232   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11233   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11234   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11235   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11236
11237 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11238   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11239   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11240   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11241   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11242   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11243 </pre></blockquote>
11244
11245 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11246 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11247 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
11248 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11249 also exist.</p>
11250
11251 <blockquote><pre>
11252 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11253 objectclass: top
11254 objectclass: dnsdomain
11255 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11256 dc: tjener
11257 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11258 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11259
11260 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11261 objectclass: top
11262 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11263 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11264 dc: 2
11265 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11266 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11267 </pre></blockquote>
11268
11269 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11270 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11271 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11272 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11273 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11274 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11275 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11276 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11277 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11278 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11279 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11280 instead.</p>
11281
11282 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11283 like this:</p>
11284
11285 <blockquote><pre>
11286 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11287   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11288   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11289   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11290   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11291   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11292
11293 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11294   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11295 </pre></blockquote>
11296
11297 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11298 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11299 reverse lookups.</p>
11300
11301 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11302 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11303 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11304 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11305
11306 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11307 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11308 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11309
11310 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11311 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11312 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11313 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11314 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11315
11316 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11317 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11318 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11319 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11320 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11321
11322 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11323 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11324 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11325 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11326 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11327 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11328
11329 <blockquote><pre>
11330 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11331     SUP top
11332     AUXILIARY
11333     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11334           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11335           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11336           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11337           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11338     ))
11339 </pre></blockquote>
11340
11341 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11342 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11343 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11344 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11345 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11346 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11347
11348 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11349
11350 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11351 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11352 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11353 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11354 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11355
11356 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11357 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11358 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11359 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11360
11361 <blockquote><pre>
11362 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11363 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11364 </pre></blockquote>
11365
11366 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11367 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11368 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11369 search result is this entry:</p>
11370
11371 <blockquote><pre>
11372 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11373 cn: dhcp
11374 objectClass: top
11375 objectClass: dhcpServer
11376 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11377 </pre></blockquote>
11378
11379 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11380 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11381 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11382 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11383 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11384 The search result is this entry:</p>
11385
11386 <blockquote><pre>
11387 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11388 cn: DHCP Config
11389 objectClass: top
11390 objectClass: dhcpService
11391 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11392 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11393 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11394 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11395 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11396 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11397 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11398 </pre></blockquote>
11399
11400 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11401 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11402 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11403 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11404 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11405 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11406 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11407 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11408 related computer objects.</p>
11409
11410 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11411 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11412 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11413 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11414 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11415 like:</p>
11416
11417 <blockquote><pre>
11418 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11419 cn: hostname
11420 objectClass: top
11421 objectClass: dhcpHost
11422 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11423 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11424 </pre></blockquote>
11425
11426 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11427 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11428 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11429 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11430 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11431 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11432 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11433 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11434 structural object class.
11435
11436 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11437
11438 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11439 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11440 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11441 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11442 in the configuration.</p>
11443
11444 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11445 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11446 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11447 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11448 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11449 structure.</p>
11450
11451 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11452 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11453
11454 <blockquote><pre>
11455 ou=services
11456   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11457     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11458     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11459       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11460         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11461     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11462       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11463         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11464     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11465       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11466 </pre></blockquote>
11467
11468 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11469 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11470 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11471 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11472
11473 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11474 like this:</p>
11475
11476 <blockquote><pre>
11477 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11478 dc: hostname
11479 objectClass: top
11480 objectClass: dhcpHost
11481 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11482 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11483 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11484 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11485 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11486 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11487 </pre></blockquote>
11488
11489 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11490 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11491 auxiliary object class.</p>
11492
11493       </div>
11494       <div class="tags">
11495
11496
11497         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>.
11498
11499
11500       </div>
11501     </div>
11502     <div class="padding"></div>
11503
11504     <div class="entry">
11505       <div class="title">
11506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11507       </div>
11508       <div class="date">
11509         14th July 2010
11510       </div>
11511       <div class="body">
11512         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11513 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11514 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11515 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11516 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11517
11518 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11519 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11520
11521 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11522 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11523 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11524 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11525 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11526 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11527
11528 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11529 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11530 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11531 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11532 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11533 seem to work.</p>
11534
11535 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11536 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11537 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11538 this:</p>
11539
11540 <blockquote><pre>
11541   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11542   cn: hostname
11543   objectClass: dhcphost
11544   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11545   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11546   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11547   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11548   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11549   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11550   ldapconfigsound: Y
11551 </pre></blockquote>
11552
11553 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11554 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11555 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11556 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11557
11558 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11559 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11560 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11561 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11562 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11563 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11564 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11565 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11566
11567 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11568 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11569
11570       </div>
11571       <div class="tags">
11572
11573
11574         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>.
11575
11576
11577       </div>
11578     </div>
11579     <div class="padding"></div>
11580
11581     <div class="entry">
11582       <div class="title">
11583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11584       </div>
11585       <div class="date">
11586         11th July 2010
11587       </div>
11588       <div class="body">
11589         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11590 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11591 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11592 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
11593
11594 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11595 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
11596 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11597 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11598 LTSP clients.</p>
11599
11600 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11601 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11602 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
11603
11604 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11605 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11606 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
11607
11608 <blockquote><pre>
11609 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11610 #
11611 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11612 #
11613 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11614 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11615 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11616 #
11617 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11618 # existence of attribute names.
11619 #
11620 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11621 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11622 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11623 #
11624 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11625 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
11626 #
11627 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11628 #     SUP top
11629 #     AUXILIARY
11630 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11631
11632 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11633 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11634     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11635     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
11636         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11637         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11638             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11639             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11640             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11641             # bass value on to clients
11642             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11643         done
11644     done
11645 fi
11646 </pre></blockquote>
11647
11648 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11649 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11650 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11651 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11652 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
11653
11654 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11655 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11656
11657 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11658 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
11659 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11660 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
11661 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
11662 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
11663
11664       </div>
11665       <div class="tags">
11666
11667
11668         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>.
11669
11670
11671       </div>
11672     </div>
11673     <div class="padding"></div>
11674
11675     <div class="entry">
11676       <div class="title">
11677         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="date">
11680          9th July 2010
11681       </div>
11682       <div class="body">
11683         <p>Since
11684 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11685 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11686 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
11687 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
11688 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11689 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
11690 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11691 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
11692 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11693 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
11694 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
11695 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11696 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
11697
11698       </div>
11699       <div class="tags">
11700
11701
11702         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>.
11703
11704
11705       </div>
11706     </div>
11707     <div class="padding"></div>
11708
11709     <div class="entry">
11710       <div class="title">
11711         <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>
11712       </div>
11713       <div class="date">
11714          3rd July 2010
11715       </div>
11716       <div class="body">
11717         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
11718 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11719 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
11720 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
11721 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11722 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11723 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
11724 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
11725
11726 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11727 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
11728 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
11729 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11730 publish the difference.</p>
11731
11732 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11733
11734 <blockquote><p>
11735   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11736   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
11737   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11738   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11739   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11740   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11741   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11742   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11743 </p></blockquote>
11744
11745 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11746
11747 <blockquote><p>
11748   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11749   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11750   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
11751   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11752   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
11753   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
11754   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11755   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11756   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11757   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11758   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11759   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
11760   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11761   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
11762   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11763   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11764   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
11765   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11766   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11767   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11768 </p></blockquote>
11769
11770 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11771
11772 <blockquote><p>
11773   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11774   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11775   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11776   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11777   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11778   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11779   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11780   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11781   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11782   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11783   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11784   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11785   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11786   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11787   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11788   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11789   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11790   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11791   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11792   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11793   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11794 </p></blockquote>
11795
11796 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11797
11798 <blockquote><p>
11799   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11800   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11801   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11802 </p></blockquote>
11803
11804 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11805 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11806 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11807 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11808 the difference somewhat.
11809
11810       </div>
11811       <div class="tags">
11812
11813
11814         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>.
11815
11816
11817       </div>
11818     </div>
11819     <div class="padding"></div>
11820
11821     <div class="entry">
11822       <div class="title">
11823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
11824       </div>
11825       <div class="date">
11826          1st July 2010
11827       </div>
11828       <div class="body">
11829         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
11830 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
11831 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
11832 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
11833 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
11834 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
11835 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
11836 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
11837 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
11838
11839 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
11840
11841 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
11842 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
11843 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
11844 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
11845 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
11846 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
11847 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
11848 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
11849 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
11850 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
11851 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
11852 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
11853 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
11854 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
11855 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
11856
11857 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
11858
11859 <blockquote><pre>
11860 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
11861 </pre></blockquote>
11862
11863 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
11864 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
11865 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
11866 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
11867 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
11868 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
11869 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
11870 on how to get this working.</p>
11871
11872 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
11873 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
11874 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
11875 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
11876 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
11877 instructions I found in the
11878 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
11879 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
11880
11881 <blockquote><pre>
11882         debug-level             0
11883         reload-count            unlimited
11884         paranoia                no
11885
11886         enable-cache            passwd          yes
11887         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
11888         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
11889         suggested-size          passwd          211
11890         check-files             passwd          yes
11891         persistent              passwd          yes
11892         shared                  passwd          yes
11893         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
11894         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
11895
11896         enable-cache            group           yes
11897         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
11898         negative-time-to-live   group           20
11899         suggested-size          group           211
11900         check-files             group           yes
11901         persistent              group           yes
11902         shared                  group           yes
11903         max-db-size             group           33554432
11904         auto-propagate          group           yes
11905
11906         enable-cache            hosts           no
11907         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
11908         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
11909         suggested-size          hosts           211
11910         check-files             hosts           yes
11911         persistent              hosts           yes
11912         shared                  hosts           yes
11913         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
11914
11915         enable-cache            services        yes
11916         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
11917         negative-time-to-live   services        20
11918         suggested-size          services        211
11919         check-files             services        yes
11920         persistent              services        yes
11921         shared                  services        yes
11922         max-db-size             services        33554432
11923 </pre></blockquote>
11924
11925 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
11926 automatically like the one provided in
11927 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
11928 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
11929 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
11930 look like this:</p>
11931
11932 <blockquote><pre>
11933 passwd:         files ldap
11934 group:          files ldap
11935 shadow:         files ldap
11936 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
11937 networks:       files
11938 protocols:      files
11939 services:       files
11940 ethers:         files
11941 rpc:            files
11942 netgroup:       files ldap
11943 </pre></blockquote>
11944
11945 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
11946 shadow and netgroup.</p>
11947
11948 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
11949 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
11950 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
11951 attributes cached.
11952
11953 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
11954   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
11955
11956 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
11957 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
11958 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
11959 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
11960 discovered sssd.</p>
11961
11962 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
11963
11964 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
11965 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
11966 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
11967 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
11968 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
11969 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
11970 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
11971 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
11972 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
11973 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
11974 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
11975 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
11976 version 1.2 is now in testing.
11977
11978 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
11979 roaming setup I want</p>
11980
11981 <blockquote><pre>
11982 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
11983 </pre></blockquote>
11984
11985 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
11986 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
11987
11988 <blockquote><pre>
11989 [sssd]
11990 config_file_version = 2
11991 reconnection_retries = 3
11992 sbus_timeout = 30
11993 services = nss, pam
11994 domains = INTERN
11995
11996 [nss]
11997 filter_groups = root
11998 filter_users = root
11999 reconnection_retries = 3
12000
12001 [pam]
12002 reconnection_retries = 3
12003
12004 [domain/INTERN]
12005 enumerate = false
12006 cache_credentials = true
12007
12008 id_provider = ldap
12009 auth_provider = ldap
12010 chpass_provider = ldap
12011
12012 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
12013 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12014 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
12015 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
12016 </pre></blockquote>
12017
12018 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
12019 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
12020
12021 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
12022 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
12023 modify it manually.</p>
12024
12025 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12026 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12027
12028       </div>
12029       <div class="tags">
12030
12031
12032         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12033
12034
12035       </div>
12036     </div>
12037     <div class="padding"></div>
12038
12039     <div class="entry">
12040       <div class="title">
12041         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
12042       </div>
12043       <div class="date">
12044         28th June 2010
12045       </div>
12046       <div class="body">
12047         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
12048 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
12049 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
12050 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
12051 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
12052 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
12053 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
12054 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
12055 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
12056 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
12057
12058 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
12059 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
12060 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
12061 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
12062 released.</p>
12063
12064 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
12065 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
12066 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
12067 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
12068
12069 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
12070 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12071
12072 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
12073 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
12074 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
12075 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
12076 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
12077
12078       </div>
12079       <div class="tags">
12080
12081
12082         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>.
12083
12084
12085       </div>
12086     </div>
12087     <div class="padding"></div>
12088
12089     <div class="entry">
12090       <div class="title">
12091         <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>
12092       </div>
12093       <div class="date">
12094         24th June 2010
12095       </div>
12096       <div class="body">
12097         <p>A while back, I
12098 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
12099 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12100 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12101 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
12102
12103 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12104 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12105 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12106 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
12107
12108 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12109 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12110 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12111 Debian Edu.</p>
12112
12113 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12114 the
12115 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
12116 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12117 available today from IETF.</p>
12118
12119 <pre>
12120 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
12121 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
12122 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12123  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12124         NAME 'dhcpHost'
12125         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
12126 -       SUP top
12127 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
12128         MUST cn
12129         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12130         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
12131 </pre>
12132
12133 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12134 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12135 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
12136
12137 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12138 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12139
12140       </div>
12141       <div class="tags">
12142
12143
12144         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>.
12145
12146
12147       </div>
12148     </div>
12149     <div class="padding"></div>
12150
12151     <div class="entry">
12152       <div class="title">
12153         <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>
12154       </div>
12155       <div class="date">
12156         16th June 2010
12157       </div>
12158       <div class="body">
12159         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12160 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
12161 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12162 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12163 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12164 this:
12165
12166 <blockquote><pre>
12167 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12168 tasksel --new-install
12169 </pre></blockquote>
12170
12171 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12172 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12173 any output what so ever.
12174
12175 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12176 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12177 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12178 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12179 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12180 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12181 code like this:
12182
12183 <blockquote><pre>
12184 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12185 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
12186 $cmd
12187 </pre></blockquote>
12188
12189 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
12190 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12191 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12192 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12193 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12194 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12195 installation.</p>
12196
12197 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12198 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12199 like this.</p>
12200
12201       </div>
12202       <div class="tags">
12203
12204
12205         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>.
12206
12207
12208       </div>
12209     </div>
12210     <div class="padding"></div>
12211
12212     <div class="entry">
12213       <div class="title">
12214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
12215       </div>
12216       <div class="date">
12217         13th June 2010
12218       </div>
12219       <div class="body">
12220         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
12221 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
12222 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
12223 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
12224 pages.</p>
12225
12226 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
12227 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
12228 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
12229 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
12230 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
12231 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
12232 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
12233 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
12234 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
12235 see how the project is doing.</p>
12236
12237 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
12238 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
12239 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
12240 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
12241 Windows.  This is great.</p>
12242
12243       </div>
12244       <div class="tags">
12245
12246
12247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12248
12249
12250       </div>
12251     </div>
12252     <div class="padding"></div>
12253
12254     <div class="entry">
12255       <div class="title">
12256         <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>
12257       </div>
12258       <div class="date">
12259         13th June 2010
12260       </div>
12261       <div class="body">
12262         <p>My
12263 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
12264 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
12265 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12266 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
12267 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12268 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12269 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
12270
12271 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12272 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12273 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12274 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12275 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12276 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12277 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12278 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
12279
12280 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12281 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12282 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12283 too surprising.</p>
12284
12285 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12286 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
12287 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
12288 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12289 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12290 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
12291 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
12292 continue.</p>
12293
12294 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
12295 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12296   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12297   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12298   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12299   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12300   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12301   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12302   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12303   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12304   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12305   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12306   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12307   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12308   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12309   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12310   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12311   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12312   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12313   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12314   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12315   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12316   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12317   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12318   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12319   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12320   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12321   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12322   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12323   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
12324
12325 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
12326
12327 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12328   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12329   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12330   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12331   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12332   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12333   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12334   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12335   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12336   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12337   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12338   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12339   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12340   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12341   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12342   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12343   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12344   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12345   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12346   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12347   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12348   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12349   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12350   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12351   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12352   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12353   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12354   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12355   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12356   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12357   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12358   zip</p>
12359
12360 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
12361
12362 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
12363   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
12364   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
12365   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
12366   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
12367   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
12368   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12369   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12370   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12371   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12372   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12373   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12374   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12375   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12376   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12377   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12378   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12379   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12380   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12381   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12382   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12383   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12384   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12385   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12386   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12387   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12388   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12389   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
12390
12391 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
12392 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
12393   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12394   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
12395   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
12396   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12397   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
12398   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
12399   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12400   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
12401   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
12402   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
12403   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
12404   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
12405   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
12406   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
12407   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
12408   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12409   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12410   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12411   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
12412   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12413   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
12414   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
12415   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12416   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12417   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
12418   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
12419   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
12420   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
12421   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
12422   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
12423   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
12424   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
12425   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
12426   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12427   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
12428   xulrunner-1.9</p>
12429
12430
12431       </div>
12432       <div class="tags">
12433
12434
12435         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>.
12436
12437
12438       </div>
12439     </div>
12440     <div class="padding"></div>
12441
12442     <div class="entry">
12443       <div class="title">
12444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
12445       </div>
12446       <div class="date">
12447         11th June 2010
12448       </div>
12449       <div class="body">
12450         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
12451 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
12452 have been discovered and reported in the process
12453 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
12454 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12455 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12456 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12457 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12458
12459 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12460 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12461 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12462 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12463 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12464 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12465
12466 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12467 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12468 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12469 is created.  The bug report
12470 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12471 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12472 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
12473 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12474 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
12475 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12476 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12477 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12478 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
12479 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12480 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12481 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12482 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12483
12484 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
12485 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12486 trick:</p>
12487
12488 <blockquote><pre>
12489 #!/bin/sh
12490 set -ex
12491
12492 if [ "$1" ] ; then
12493     desktop=$1
12494 else
12495     desktop=gnome
12496 fi
12497
12498 from=lenny
12499 to=squeeze
12500
12501 exec &lt; /dev/null
12502 unset LANG
12503 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12504 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12505 fuser -mv .
12506 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12507 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12508 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
12509 #!/bin/sh
12510 exit 101
12511 EOF
12512 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12513 exit_cleanup() {
12514     umount $tmpdir/proc
12515 }
12516 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12517 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12518 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12519
12520 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12521
12522 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
12523 # to return the correct answers.
12524 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12525     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12526
12527 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12528 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12529     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12530 #!/bin/sh
12531 exit 2
12532 EOF
12533     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12534 done
12535
12536 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12537 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12538 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12539 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12540
12541 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12542 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12543 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12544 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12545 fuser -mv
12546 </pre></blockquote>
12547
12548 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12549 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12550 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12551 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12552 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12553 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12554
12555 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12556 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12557 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12558 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12559 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12560 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12561 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12562
12563 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12564 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12565 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12566 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12567 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12568 packages.</p>
12569
12570       </div>
12571       <div class="tags">
12572
12573
12574         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>.
12575
12576
12577       </div>
12578     </div>
12579     <div class="padding"></div>
12580
12581     <div class="entry">
12582       <div class="title">
12583         <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>
12584       </div>
12585       <div class="date">
12586          6th June 2010
12587       </div>
12588       <div class="body">
12589         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12590 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12591 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12592 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12593 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12594 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12595 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12596
12597 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12598 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12599 COLUMNS):</p>
12600
12601 <blockquote><pre>
12602 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12603 previous=N
12604 PREVLEVEL=
12605 RUNLEVEL=
12606 runlevel=S
12607 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12608 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12609 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12610 </pre></blockquote>
12611
12612 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12613 script.</p>
12614
12615 <blockquote><pre>
12616 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12617 previous=N
12618 PREVLEVEL=N
12619 RUNLEVEL=S
12620 runlevel=S
12621 </pre></blockquote>
12622
12623 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12624 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12625 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12626
12627 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12628 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12629 choice.</p>
12630
12631       </div>
12632       <div class="tags">
12633
12634
12635         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>.
12636
12637
12638       </div>
12639     </div>
12640     <div class="padding"></div>
12641
12642     <div class="entry">
12643       <div class="title">
12644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12645       </div>
12646       <div class="date">
12647          6th June 2010
12648       </div>
12649       <div class="body">
12650         <p>Via the
12651 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12652 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12653 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12654 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12655 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12656
12657       </div>
12658       <div class="tags">
12659
12660
12661         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>.
12662
12663
12664       </div>
12665     </div>
12666     <div class="padding"></div>
12667
12668     <div class="entry">
12669       <div class="title">
12670         <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>
12671       </div>
12672       <div class="date">
12673          3rd June 2010
12674       </div>
12675       <div class="body">
12676         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12677 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12678 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12679 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12680 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12681
12682 <blockquote><pre>
12683 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12684   vendor                    count
12685   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12686     PowerEdge 1750              1
12687   IBM                           1
12688     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12689   Intel                         2
12690   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12691 maintainer:~#
12692 </pre></blockquote>
12693
12694 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12695 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12696 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12697 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12698 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12699
12700 <p>A larger list is
12701 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12702 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12703 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12704 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12705 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12706 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12707 collector.</p>
12708
12709       </div>
12710       <div class="tags">
12711
12712
12713         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>.
12714
12715
12716       </div>
12717     </div>
12718     <div class="padding"></div>
12719
12720     <div class="entry">
12721       <div class="title">
12722         <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>
12723       </div>
12724       <div class="date">
12725          1st June 2010
12726       </div>
12727       <div class="body">
12728         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12729 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12730 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12731 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12732 wait.</p>
12733
12734 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12735 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12736 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12737 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12738 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12739 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12740
12741 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12742 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12743 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12744 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12745 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12746 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12747 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12748 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12749
12750 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12751
12752       </div>
12753       <div class="tags">
12754
12755
12756         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>.
12757
12758
12759       </div>
12760     </div>
12761     <div class="padding"></div>
12762
12763     <div class="entry">
12764       <div class="title">
12765         <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>
12766       </div>
12767       <div class="date">
12768         27th May 2010
12769       </div>
12770       <div class="body">
12771         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12772 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12773 issues are known and should be solved:
12774
12775 <p><ul>
12776
12777 <li>The wicd package seen to
12778 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12779 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12780 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12781 seem to be on the case.</li>
12782
12783 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12784 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12785 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12786 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12787
12788 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12789 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12790 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12791 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12792 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12793 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12794 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12795 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12796
12797 </ul></p>
12798
12799 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12800 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12801 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12802 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12803
12804 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12805 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12806 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12807 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12808
12809 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12810
12811       </div>
12812       <div class="tags">
12813
12814
12815         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>.
12816
12817
12818       </div>
12819     </div>
12820     <div class="padding"></div>
12821
12822     <div class="entry">
12823       <div class="title">
12824         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12825       </div>
12826       <div class="date">
12827         22nd May 2010
12828       </div>
12829       <div class="body">
12830         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12831 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12832 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12833 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12834
12835 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12836 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12837 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12838 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12839 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12840 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12841 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12842 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12843 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12844 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12845 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12846 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12847 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12848 going to work.</p>
12849
12850 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12851 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12852 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12853 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12854 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
12855 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12856 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
12857 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12858 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12859 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12860 Edu.</p>
12861
12862 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12863 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12864 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12865 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
12866 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12867 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
12868
12869 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12870 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
12871
12872       </div>
12873       <div class="tags">
12874
12875
12876         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>.
12877
12878
12879       </div>
12880     </div>
12881     <div class="padding"></div>
12882
12883     <div class="entry">
12884       <div class="title">
12885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
12886       </div>
12887       <div class="date">
12888         19th May 2010
12889       </div>
12890       <div class="body">
12891         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
12892 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
12893 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
12894 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
12895 into unstable.  The
12896 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
12897 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
12898 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
12899 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
12900 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
12901 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
12902 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
12903
12904 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
12905 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
12906 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
12907 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
12908 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
12909 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
12910 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
12911 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
12912
12913 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
12914 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
12915 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
12916 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
12917 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
12918 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
12919 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
12920
12921 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
12922 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
12923 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
12924 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
12925 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
12926 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
12927 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
12928 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
12929 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
12930 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
12931 on the home directory servers.</p>
12932
12933 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
12934 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
12935 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
12936 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
12937 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
12938 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
12939
12940 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12941 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12942
12943       </div>
12944       <div class="tags">
12945
12946
12947         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12948
12949
12950       </div>
12951     </div>
12952     <div class="padding"></div>
12953
12954     <div class="entry">
12955       <div class="title">
12956         <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>
12957       </div>
12958       <div class="date">
12959         14th May 2010
12960       </div>
12961       <div class="body">
12962         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12963 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12964 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12965 expected, if I am to believe the
12966 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12967 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12968 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12969 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12970 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12971 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12972 version.</p>
12973
12974 More information about
12975 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12976 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12977 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12978 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12979
12980 <blockquote><pre>
12981 CONCURRENCY=none
12982 </pre></blockquote>
12983
12984 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12985 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12986 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12987 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12988
12989       </div>
12990       <div class="tags">
12991
12992
12993         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>.
12994
12995
12996       </div>
12997     </div>
12998     <div class="padding"></div>
12999
13000     <div class="entry">
13001       <div class="title">
13002         <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>
13003       </div>
13004       <div class="date">
13005         14th May 2010
13006       </div>
13007       <div class="body">
13008         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13009 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
13010 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13011 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13012 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
13013 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13014 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
13015 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
13016
13017 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
13018 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
13019 this on the collector host:</p>
13020
13021 <blockquote><pre>
13022 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
13023 </pre></blockquote>
13024
13025 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
13026 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
13027
13028 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
13029 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
13030 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
13031 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
13032 written yet.</p>
13033
13034       </div>
13035       <div class="tags">
13036
13037
13038         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>.
13039
13040
13041       </div>
13042     </div>
13043     <div class="padding"></div>
13044
13045     <div class="entry">
13046       <div class="title">
13047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
13048       </div>
13049       <div class="date">
13050         13th May 2010
13051       </div>
13052       <div class="body">
13053         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
13054 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
13055 has been
13056 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
13057
13058 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
13059 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
13060 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
13061 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
13062 based boot system.  Tollef is
13063 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
13064 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
13065 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
13066 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
13067 at the moment do not.</p>
13068
13069 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
13070 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
13071 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
13072 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
13073 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
13074 way forward.</p>
13075
13076 <p>In the mean time, based on the
13077 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
13078 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
13079 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
13080 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
13081 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
13082 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
13083 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
13084 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
13085
13086       </div>
13087       <div class="tags">
13088
13089
13090         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>.
13091
13092
13093       </div>
13094     </div>
13095     <div class="padding"></div>
13096
13097     <div class="entry">
13098       <div class="title">
13099         <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>
13100       </div>
13101       <div class="date">
13102          6th May 2010
13103       </div>
13104       <div class="body">
13105         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
13106 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
13107 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
13108 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
13109 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13110 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
13111 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
13112
13113 <blockquote><pre>
13114 CONCURRENCY=makefile
13115 </pre></blockquote>
13116
13117 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
13118 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
13119 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
13120 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
13121 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
13122 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
13123 make this happen.</p>
13124
13125 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
13126 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
13127 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
13128 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
13129 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
13130
13131 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
13132 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
13133 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
13134 fix the remaining issues.</p>
13135
13136 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13137 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13138 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
13139 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
13140
13141       </div>
13142       <div class="tags">
13143
13144
13145         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>.
13146
13147
13148       </div>
13149     </div>
13150     <div class="padding"></div>
13151
13152     <div class="entry">
13153       <div class="title">
13154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
13155       </div>
13156       <div class="date">
13157          2nd May 2010
13158       </div>
13159       <div class="body">
13160         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
13161 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
13162 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
13163
13164 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
13165 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
13166 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
13167 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
13168 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
13169
13170 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
13171 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
13172
13173 <blockquote><pre>
13174 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13175 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
13176 Password expires                                        : never
13177 Password inactive                                       : never
13178 Account expires                                         : never
13179 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13180 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
13181 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13182 root@tjener:~#
13183 </pre></blockquote>
13184
13185 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
13186 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
13187 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
13188 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
13189 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
13190 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
13191
13192 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
13193 intended:</p>
13194
13195 <blockquote><pre>
13196 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
13197 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13198 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
13199 Password expires                                        : never
13200 Password inactive                                       : never
13201 Account expires                                         : never
13202 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13203 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
13204 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13205 root@tjener:~#
13206 </pre></blockquote>
13207
13208 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
13209 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
13210 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
13211
13212 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
13213 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
13214
13215 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
13216 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13217
13218 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
13219 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
13220 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
13221 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
13222 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
13223 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
13224 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
13225
13226 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
13227 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
13228 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
13229 change.</p>
13230
13231       </div>
13232       <div class="tags">
13233
13234
13235         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
13236
13237
13238       </div>
13239     </div>
13240     <div class="padding"></div>
13241
13242     <div class="entry">
13243       <div class="title">
13244         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
13245       </div>
13246       <div class="date">
13247         28th April 2010
13248       </div>
13249       <div class="body">
13250         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
13251 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
13252 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
13253 and go.</p>
13254
13255 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
13256 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
13257 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
13258 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
13259
13260 <ul>
13261
13262  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
13263    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
13264    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
13265    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
13266    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
13267    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
13268    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
13269    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
13270    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
13271    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
13272    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
13273    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
13274
13275  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
13276    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
13277    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
13278    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
13279    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
13280    or the Fedora developed
13281    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
13282    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
13283
13284  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
13285    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
13286    directory, using unison.</li>
13287
13288  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
13289    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
13290    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
13291    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
13292    implemented.</li>
13293
13294  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
13295    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
13296
13297  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
13298    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
13299    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
13300
13301 </ul>
13302
13303 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
13304 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
13305 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
13306 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
13307 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
13308 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
13309 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
13310 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
13311 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
13312
13313 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13314 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13315
13316       </div>
13317       <div class="tags">
13318
13319
13320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13321
13322
13323       </div>
13324     </div>
13325     <div class="padding"></div>
13326
13327     <div class="entry">
13328       <div class="title">
13329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
13330       </div>
13331       <div class="date">
13332         19th April 2010
13333       </div>
13334       <div class="body">
13335         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
13336 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
13337 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
13338 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
13339 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
13340 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
13341 restrictions on the web, for example from
13342 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
13343 epub-version from
13344 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
13345 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
13346 strongly recommend this book.</p>
13347
13348       </div>
13349       <div class="tags">
13350
13351
13352         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13353
13354
13355       </div>
13356     </div>
13357     <div class="padding"></div>
13358
13359     <div class="entry">
13360       <div class="title">
13361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
13362       </div>
13363       <div class="date">
13364         14th April 2010
13365       </div>
13366       <div class="body">
13367         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
13368 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
13369 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
13370 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
13371 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
13372 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
13373 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
13374 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
13375 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
13376
13377 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
13378 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
13379 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
13380 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
13381 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
13382
13383 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
13384 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
13385
13386 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
13387 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
13388 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
13389 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
13390 to work properly.</p>
13391
13392 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
13393 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
13394 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
13395 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
13396 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
13397 time.</p>
13398
13399 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
13400 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
13401 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
13402 up in a few days.</p>
13403
13404       </div>
13405       <div class="tags">
13406
13407
13408         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13409
13410
13411       </div>
13412     </div>
13413     <div class="padding"></div>
13414
13415     <div class="entry">
13416       <div class="title">
13417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
13418       </div>
13419       <div class="date">
13420          6th March 2010
13421       </div>
13422       <div class="body">
13423         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
13424 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
13425 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
13426 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
13427 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
13428 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
13429
13430 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
13431 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
13432 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
13433 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
13434
13435 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
13436 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
13437 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
13438 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
13439 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
13440 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
13441
13442       </div>
13443       <div class="tags">
13444
13445
13446         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13447
13448
13449       </div>
13450     </div>
13451     <div class="padding"></div>
13452
13453     <div class="entry">
13454       <div class="title">
13455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
13456       </div>
13457       <div class="date">
13458         11th February 2010
13459       </div>
13460       <div class="body">
13461         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
13462 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
13463 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
13464 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
13465 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
13466 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
13467 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
13468
13469 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
13470
13471 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
13472 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
13473 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
13474 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
13475
13476       </div>
13477       <div class="tags">
13478
13479
13480         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13481
13482
13483       </div>
13484     </div>
13485     <div class="padding"></div>
13486
13487     <div class="entry">
13488       <div class="title">
13489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
13490       </div>
13491       <div class="date">
13492         27th January 2010
13493       </div>
13494       <div class="body">
13495         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
13496 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
13497 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
13498 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
13499 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
13500 further.</p>
13501
13502 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
13503 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
13504 configured to be a server for the
13505 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
13506 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
13507 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
13508 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
13509 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
13510 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
13511 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
13512 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
13513 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
13514 and Nagios configuration.</p>
13515
13516 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
13517 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
13518 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
13519 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
13520
13521 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
13522 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
13523 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
13524 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
13525 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
13526 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
13527 the machine.</p>
13528
13529 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
13530 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
13531 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
13532 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
13533
13534 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
13535 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
13536 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
13537 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
13538 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
13539 everything is taken care of.</p>
13540
13541       </div>
13542       <div class="tags">
13543
13544
13545         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
13546
13547
13548       </div>
13549     </div>
13550     <div class="padding"></div>
13551
13552     <div class="entry">
13553       <div class="title">
13554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
13555       </div>
13556       <div class="date">
13557         12th August 2009
13558       </div>
13559       <div class="body">
13560         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
13561 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
13562 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
13563 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
13564
13565 <table>
13566 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13567 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13568 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
13569 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
13570 </table>
13571
13572 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
13573 got these numbers:</p>
13574
13575 <table>
13576 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13577 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
13578 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
13579 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
13580 </table>
13581
13582 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
13583
13584 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
13585 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
13586 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
13587 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
13588 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
13589
13590
13591 <table>
13592 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13593 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
13594 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
13595 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
13596 </table>
13597
13598 <p>And with 'site:no':
13599
13600 <table>
13601 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
13602 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
13603 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
13604 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
13605 </table>
13606
13607 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
13608 numbers.</p>
13609
13610       </div>
13611       <div class="tags">
13612
13613
13614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13615
13616
13617       </div>
13618     </div>
13619     <div class="padding"></div>
13620
13621     <div class="entry">
13622       <div class="title">
13623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
13624       </div>
13625       <div class="date">
13626          8th August 2009
13627       </div>
13628       <div class="body">
13629         <p>According to <a
13630 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
13631 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
13632 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
13633 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
13634 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
13635 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
13636 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
13637 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
13638 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
13639 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
13640
13641 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
13642 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
13643 seminar this autumn.</p>
13644
13645       </div>
13646       <div class="tags">
13647
13648
13649         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13650
13651
13652       </div>
13653     </div>
13654     <div class="padding"></div>
13655
13656     <div class="entry">
13657       <div class="title">
13658         <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>
13659       </div>
13660       <div class="date">
13661         27th July 2009
13662       </div>
13663       <div class="body">
13664         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
13665 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
13666 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
13667 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
13668 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
13669 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
13670 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
13671
13672 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
13673 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
13674 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
13675
13676       </div>
13677       <div class="tags">
13678
13679
13680         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>.
13681
13682
13683       </div>
13684     </div>
13685     <div class="padding"></div>
13686
13687     <div class="entry">
13688       <div class="title">
13689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
13690       </div>
13691       <div class="date">
13692         22nd July 2009
13693       </div>
13694       <div class="body">
13695         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
13696 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
13697 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
13698 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
13699 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
13700 the package up to date.</p>
13701
13702 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
13703 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
13704 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
13705 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
13706 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
13707 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
13708 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
13709 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
13710 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
13711 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
13712 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
13713 working on the future release.</p>
13714
13715 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
13716 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
13717
13718       </div>
13719       <div class="tags">
13720
13721
13722         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>.
13723
13724
13725       </div>
13726     </div>
13727     <div class="padding"></div>
13728
13729     <div class="entry">
13730       <div class="title">
13731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
13732       </div>
13733       <div class="date">
13734         24th June 2009
13735       </div>
13736       <div class="body">
13737         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
13738 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
13739 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
13740 funded
13741 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
13742 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
13743 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
13744 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
13745 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
13746 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
13747
13748 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
13749 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
13750 boot:</p>
13751
13752 <ul>
13753
13754 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
13755
13756 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
13757    clock is in UTC.</li>
13758
13759 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
13760    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
13761    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
13762
13763 </ul>
13764
13765 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
13766 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
13767 Villegas</a>.
13768
13769 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
13770 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
13771 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
13772 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
13773 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
13774 using this.</p>
13775
13776 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
13777 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
13778 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
13779 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
13780 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
13781 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
13782 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
13783
13784       </div>
13785       <div class="tags">
13786
13787
13788         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>.
13789
13790
13791       </div>
13792     </div>
13793     <div class="padding"></div>
13794
13795     <div class="entry">
13796       <div class="title">
13797         <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>
13798       </div>
13799       <div class="date">
13800          2nd May 2009
13801       </div>
13802       <div class="body">
13803         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
13804 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
13805 do not yet know them.</p>
13806
13807 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
13808 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
13809 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
13810 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
13811 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
13812 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
13813 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
13814 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
13815 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
13816 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
13817 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
13818
13819 <p>The second one is
13820 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
13821 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
13822 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
13823 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
13824 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
13825 and the company behind it is running
13826 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
13827 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
13828 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
13829 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
13830 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
13831 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
13832 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
13833 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
13834
13835 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
13836 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
13837 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
13838 surrounded by today.</p>
13839
13840       </div>
13841       <div class="tags">
13842
13843
13844         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>.
13845
13846
13847       </div>
13848     </div>
13849     <div class="padding"></div>
13850
13851     <div class="entry">
13852       <div class="title">
13853         <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>
13854       </div>
13855       <div class="date">
13856         28th April 2009
13857       </div>
13858       <div class="body">
13859         <p>Julien Blache
13860 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
13861 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
13862 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
13863 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
13864 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
13865 properties.</p>
13866
13867       </div>
13868       <div class="tags">
13869
13870
13871         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>.
13872
13873
13874       </div>
13875     </div>
13876     <div class="padding"></div>
13877
13878     <div class="entry">
13879       <div class="title">
13880         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
13881       </div>
13882       <div class="date">
13883          5th April 2009
13884       </div>
13885       <div class="body">
13886         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
13887 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
13888 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
13889 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
13890 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
13891 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
13892 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
13893 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
13894
13895 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
13896 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
13897 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
13898   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13899   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
13900
13901 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
13902 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
13903 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
13904 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
13905
13906 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
13907 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
13908 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
13909 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
13910
13911 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
13912 set -e
13913 URL="$1"
13914 SAVEFILE="$2"
13915 DURATION="$3"
13916 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
13917   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
13918   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
13919 pid=$!
13920 sleep $DURATION
13921 kill $pid
13922 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
13923
13924       </div>
13925       <div class="tags">
13926
13927
13928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13929
13930
13931       </div>
13932     </div>
13933     <div class="padding"></div>
13934
13935     <div class="entry">
13936       <div class="title">
13937         <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>
13938       </div>
13939       <div class="date">
13940         30th March 2009
13941       </div>
13942       <div class="body">
13943         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13944 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
13945 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13946 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13947 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13948 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13949 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13950 application.</p>
13951
13952 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13953 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
13954 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13955 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
13956 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13957 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13958 blocked from doing so.</p>
13959
13960 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13961 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13962 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13963 requirements change.</p>
13964
13965 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13966 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13967 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13968
13969       </div>
13970       <div class="tags">
13971
13972
13973         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>.
13974
13975
13976       </div>
13977     </div>
13978     <div class="padding"></div>
13979
13980     <div class="entry">
13981       <div class="title">
13982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13983       </div>
13984       <div class="date">
13985         29th March 2009
13986       </div>
13987       <div class="body">
13988         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13989 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13990 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13991 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13992 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13993 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13994 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13995 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13996 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13997 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13998 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13999 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14000 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
14001 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
14002 now. :)</p>
14003
14004       </div>
14005       <div class="tags">
14006
14007
14008         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>.
14009
14010
14011       </div>
14012     </div>
14013     <div class="padding"></div>
14014
14015     <div class="entry">
14016       <div class="title">
14017         <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>
14018       </div>
14019       <div class="date">
14020         29th March 2009
14021       </div>
14022       <div class="body">
14023         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14024 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14025 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14026 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
14027 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14028 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
14029
14030 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
14031 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14032 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14033 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
14034 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14035 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14036 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14037 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
14038 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14039 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14040 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14041 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
14042 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
14043
14044 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14045 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14046 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14047 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
14048
14049 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14050 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
14051
14052 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14053 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
14054 new IETF work group?</p>
14055
14056       </div>
14057       <div class="tags">
14058
14059
14060         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>.
14061
14062
14063       </div>
14064     </div>
14065     <div class="padding"></div>
14066
14067     <div class="entry">
14068       <div class="title">
14069         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
14070       </div>
14071       <div class="date">
14072         28th February 2009
14073       </div>
14074       <div class="body">
14075         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
14076 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
14077 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
14078 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
14079 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
14080 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
14081 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
14082 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
14083 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
14084 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
14085 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
14086 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
14087 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
14088 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
14089 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
14090 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
14091 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
14092 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
14093 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
14094 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
14095 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
14096 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
14097 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
14098 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
14099 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
14100 machine.</p>
14101
14102 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
14103 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
14104 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
14105 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
14106 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
14107 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
14108 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
14109
14110 <pre>
14111 use LWP::Simple;
14112 use POSIX;
14113 use WWW::Mechanize;
14114 use Date::Parse;
14115 [...]
14116 sub get_support_info {
14117     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
14118     my $str;
14119
14120     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
14121         # fetch website from Dell support
14122         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
14123         my $webpage = get($url);
14124         return undef unless ($webpage);
14125
14126         my $daysleft = -1;
14127         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
14128         foreach my $line (@lines) {
14129             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
14130             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14131             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
14132
14133             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
14134             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
14135             my $lastend = "";
14136             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
14137                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
14138
14139                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14140                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14141                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14142                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
14143                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
14144                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
14145                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
14146             }
14147             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14148             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14149                 if ($lastend lt $today);
14150         }
14151     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
14152         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
14153         my $url =
14154             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
14155         $mech->get($url);
14156         my $fields = {
14157             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
14158             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
14159             'country' => 'NO',
14160             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
14161             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
14162         };
14163         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
14164                             fields      => $fields );
14165         # Next step is screen scraping
14166         my $content = $mech->content();
14167
14168         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14169         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14170         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14171         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14172
14173         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14174
14175         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
14176             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
14177                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
14178             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
14179             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14180                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14181             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
14182                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
14183
14184             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
14185
14186             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14187                 if ($end lt $today);
14188         }
14189     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
14190         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
14191         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
14192         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
14193             my $content =
14194                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
14195             if ($content) {
14196                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
14197                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14198                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14199                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14200
14201                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
14202                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
14203
14204                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
14205
14206                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
14207                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14208                     if ($end lt $today);
14209             }
14210         }
14211     }
14212     return $str;
14213 }
14214 </pre>
14215
14216 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
14217 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
14218 from dmidecode.</p>
14219
14220 <pre>
14221 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
14222                        "447707-B21");
14223 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
14224 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
14225                        "1234567");
14226 </pre>
14227
14228 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
14229 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
14230
14231 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
14232 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
14233 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
14234 do so.</p>
14235
14236       </div>
14237       <div class="tags">
14238
14239
14240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14241
14242
14243       </div>
14244     </div>
14245     <div class="padding"></div>
14246
14247     <div class="entry">
14248       <div class="title">
14249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
14250       </div>
14251       <div class="date">
14252         20th February 2009
14253       </div>
14254       <div class="body">
14255         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
14256 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
14257 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
14258 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
14259 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
14260 the "missing" computer.</p>
14261
14262 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
14263 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
14264 code blocks as defined in the
14265 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
14266 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
14267 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
14268 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
14269 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
14270 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
14271 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
14272 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
14273 codes.</p>
14274
14275 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
14276 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
14277 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
14278 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
14279 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
14280 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
14281
14282 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
14283 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
14284 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
14285 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
14286 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
14287 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
14288 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
14289 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
14290 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
14291 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
14292
14293 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
14294 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
14295 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
14296
14297       </div>
14298       <div class="tags">
14299
14300
14301         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14302
14303
14304       </div>
14305     </div>
14306     <div class="padding"></div>
14307
14308     <div class="entry">
14309       <div class="title">
14310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
14311       </div>
14312       <div class="date">
14313         17th January 2009
14314       </div>
14315       <div class="body">
14316         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
14317 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
14318 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
14319 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
14320 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
14321 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
14322 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
14323 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
14324 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
14325 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
14326 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
14327 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
14328 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
14329 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
14330
14331 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
14332 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
14333 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
14334 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
14335 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
14336 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
14337 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
14338 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
14339 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
14340 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
14341 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
14342 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
14343 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
14344 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
14345 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
14346 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
14347 playing when the download is done.</p>
14348
14349 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
14350 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
14351 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
14352 too.</p>
14353
14354 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
14355 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
14356 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
14357 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
14358
14359       </div>
14360       <div class="tags">
14361
14362
14363         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14364
14365
14366       </div>
14367     </div>
14368     <div class="padding"></div>
14369
14370     <div class="entry">
14371       <div class="title">
14372         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
14373       </div>
14374       <div class="date">
14375         28th December 2008
14376       </div>
14377       <div class="body">
14378         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
14379 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
14380 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
14381 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
14382 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
14383 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
14384 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
14385 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
14386 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
14387 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
14388 source, sink and mixer applications and
14389 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
14390 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
14391 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
14392 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
14393 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
14394 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
14395 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
14396 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
14397 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
14398
14399 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
14400 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
14401 larger stick as well.</p>
14402
14403       </div>
14404       <div class="tags">
14405
14406
14407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
14408
14409
14410       </div>
14411     </div>
14412     <div class="padding"></div>
14413
14414     <div class="entry">
14415       <div class="title">
14416         <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>
14417       </div>
14418       <div class="date">
14419          7th December 2008
14420       </div>
14421       <div class="body">
14422         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14423 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14424 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14425 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14426 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14427 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
14428 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14429 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
14430
14431 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14432 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14433 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14434 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14435 of these cards.</p>
14436
14437       </div>
14438       <div class="tags">
14439
14440
14441         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>.
14442
14443
14444       </div>
14445     </div>
14446     <div class="padding"></div>
14447
14448     <div class="entry">
14449       <div class="title">
14450         <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>
14451       </div>
14452       <div class="date">
14453         25th November 2008
14454       </div>
14455       <div class="body">
14456         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14457 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14458 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14459 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14460 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
14461 notes are available on
14462 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
14463 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14464 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14465 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
14466 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14467 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
14468 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
14469 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
14470 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
14471
14472 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
14473 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
14474
14475       </div>
14476       <div class="tags">
14477
14478
14479         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>.
14480
14481
14482       </div>
14483     </div>
14484     <div class="padding"></div>
14485
14486     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
14487     <div id="sidebar">
14488
14489
14490
14491 <h2>Archive</h2>
14492 <ul>
14493
14494 <li>2013
14495 <ul>
14496
14497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
14498
14499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
14500
14501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
14502
14503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
14504
14505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (2)</a></li>
14506
14507 </ul></li>
14508
14509 <li>2012
14510 <ul>
14511
14512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
14513
14514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
14515
14516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
14517
14518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
14519
14520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
14521
14522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
14523
14524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
14525
14526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14527
14528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
14529
14530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
14531
14532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
14533
14534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14535
14536 </ul></li>
14537
14538 <li>2011
14539 <ul>
14540
14541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
14542
14543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
14544
14545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
14546
14547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
14548
14549 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
14550
14551 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
14552
14553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
14554
14555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
14556
14557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
14558
14559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14560
14561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14562
14563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
14564
14565 </ul></li>
14566
14567 <li>2010
14568 <ul>
14569
14570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
14571
14572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
14573
14574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
14575
14576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
14577
14578 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14579
14580 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
14581
14582 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
14583
14584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
14585
14586 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
14587
14588 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
14589
14590 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
14591
14592 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
14593
14594 </ul></li>
14595
14596 <li>2009
14597 <ul>
14598
14599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
14600
14601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
14602
14603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
14604
14605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
14606
14607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
14608
14609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
14610
14611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
14612
14613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
14614
14615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
14616
14617 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
14618
14619 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
14620
14621 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
14622
14623 </ul></li>
14624
14625 <li>2008
14626 <ul>
14627
14628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
14629
14630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
14631
14632 </ul></li>
14633
14634 </ul>
14635
14636
14637
14638 <h2>Tags</h2>
14639 <ul>
14640
14641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
14642
14643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
14644
14645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
14646
14647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
14648
14649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
14650
14651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
14652
14653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
14654
14655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (72)</a></li>
14656
14657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (124)</a></li>
14658
14659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
14660
14661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
14662
14663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
14664
14665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (189)</a></li>
14666
14667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
14668
14669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
14670
14671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
14672
14673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
14674
14675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (33)</a></li>
14676
14677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (6)</a></li>
14678
14679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
14680
14681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
14682
14683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
14684
14685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
14686
14687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
14688
14689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (231)</a></li>
14690
14691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (152)</a></li>
14692
14693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
14694
14695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
14696
14697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
14698
14699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
14700
14701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
14702
14703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
14704
14705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
14706
14707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
14708
14709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
14710
14711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
14712
14713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
14714
14715  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
14716
14717  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
14718
14719  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
14720
14721  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (42)</a></li>
14722
14723  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
14724
14725  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
14726
14727  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
14728
14729  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
14730
14731  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
14732
14733  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
14734
14735  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
14736
14737  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
14738
14739 </ul>
14740
14741
14742     </div>
14743     <p style="text-align: right">
14744  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
14745 </p>
14746
14747   </body>
14748 </html>