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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th November 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
  32 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
  33 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
  34 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
  35 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
  36 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
  37 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
  38 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
  39 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
  40 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
  41
  42 <pre>
  43 pub   3936R/EE4E02F9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
  44       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
  45 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
  46 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
  47 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  48 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  49 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  50 </pre>
  51
  52 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
  53 my old key.</p>
  54
  55 <p>If you signed my old key, I'd very much appreciate a signature on
  56 my new key, details and instructions in the transition statement. I m
  57 happy to reciprocate if you have a similarly signed transition
  58 statement to present.</p>
  59
  60       </div>
  61       <div class="tags">
  62
  63
  64         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>.
  65
  66
  67       </div>
  68     </div>
  69     <div class="padding"></div>
  70
  71     <div class="entry">
  72       <div class="title">
  73         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
  74       </div>
  75       <div class="date">
  76         24th September 2015
  77       </div>
  78       <div class="body">
  79         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
  80 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
  81 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
  82 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
  83 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
  84 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
  85 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
  86
  87 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
  88
  89 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
  90 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
  91 by someone else.  I found
  92 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
  93 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
  94 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
  95 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
  96 from him.  Via
  97 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
  98 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
  99 discovered
 100 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 101 available in Debian.</p>
 102
 103 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 104 battery stats ever since. Now my
 105 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 106 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 107 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 108 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 109
 110 <pre>
 111 #!/bin/sh
 112 # Inspired by
 113 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 114 # See also
 115 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 116 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 117
 118 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 119     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 120
 121 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 122     (
 123         printf "timestamp,"
 124         for f in $files; do
 125             printf "%s," $f
 126         done
 127         echo
 128     ) > "$logfile"
 129 fi
 130
 131 log_battery() {
 132     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 133     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 134     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 135         for f in $files; do \
 136             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 137         done)
 138     echo "$msg"
 139 }
 140
 141 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 142
 143 for bat in BAT*; do
 144     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 145 done
 146 </pre>
 147
 148 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 149 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 150 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 151 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 152 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 153 The code for the Debian package
 154 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 155 available on github</a>.</p>
 156
 157 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 158
 159 <pre>
 160 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 161 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 162 [...]
 163 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 164 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 165 </pre>
 166
 167 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 168 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 169 battery.</p>
 170
 171 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 172 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 173 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 174 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 175 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 176 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 177 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 178 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 179 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 180 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 181 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 182 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 183 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 184 Linux too.</p>
 185
 186 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 187 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 188 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 189 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 190 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 191 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 192 load).</p>
 193
 194 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 195 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 196 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 197 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 198 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 199 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 200 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 201 those.</p>
 202
 203 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 204 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 205 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 206 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 207 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 208 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 209 specific.</p>
 210
 211       </div>
 212       <div class="tags">
 213
 214
 215         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>.
 216
 217
 218       </div>
 219     </div>
 220     <div class="padding"></div>
 221
 222     <div class="entry">
 223       <div class="title">
 224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 225       </div>
 226       <div class="date">
 227          5th July 2015
 228       </div>
 229       <div class="body">
 230         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 231 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 232 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 233 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 234 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 235 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 236 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 237 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 238 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 239 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 240 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 241
 242 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 243 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 244 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 245 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 246 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 247 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 248 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 249
 250 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 251 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 252 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 253 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 254 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 255 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 256 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 257 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 258 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 259 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 260 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 261 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 262 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 263 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 264 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 265
 266 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 267 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 268 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 269 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 270
 271 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 272 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 273
 274 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 275 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 276 different
 277 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 278 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 279
 280       </div>
 281       <div class="tags">
 282
 283
 284         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>.
 285
 286
 287       </div>
 288     </div>
 289     <div class="padding"></div>
 290
 291     <div class="entry">
 292       <div class="title">
 293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 294       </div>
 295       <div class="date">
 296          3rd July 2015
 297       </div>
 298       <div class="body">
 299         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 300 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 301 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 302 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 303 flickering.</p>
 304
 305 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 306 still as
 307 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 308 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 309 good help from
 310 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 311 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 312 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 313 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 314 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 315 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 316 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 317 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 318 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 319
 320 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 321 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 322 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 323 have suggestions.</p>
 324
 325 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 326 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 327 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 328
 329       </div>
 330       <div class="tags">
 331
 332
 333         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>.
 334
 335
 336       </div>
 337     </div>
 338     <div class="padding"></div>
 339
 340     <div class="entry">
 341       <div class="title">
 342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
 343       </div>
 344       <div class="date">
 345         22nd November 2014
 346       </div>
 347       <div class="body">
 348         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 349 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 350 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 351 courtesy of
 352 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 353 Schubert</a> and
 354 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 355 McVittie</a>.
 356
 357 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 358 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 359 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 360 you upgrade:</p>
 361
 362 <p><blockquote><pre>
 363 Package: systemd-sysv
 364 Pin: release o=Debian
 365 Pin-Priority: -1
 366 </pre></blockquote><p>
 367
 368 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 369 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 370 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 371 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 372 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 373
 374 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 375 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 376 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 377 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 378 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 379 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 380
 381 <p><blockquote><pre>
 382 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 383 </pre></blockquote><p>
 384
 385 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 386
 387 <p><blockquote><pre>
 388 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 389 </pre></blockquote><p>
 390
 391 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 392 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 393
 394 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 395 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 396 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 397 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 398 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 399 Jessie is released.</p>
 400
 401 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 402 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 403 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 404 line.</p>
 405
 406       </div>
 407       <div class="tags">
 408
 409
 410         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>.
 411
 412
 413       </div>
 414     </div>
 415     <div class="padding"></div>
 416
 417     <div class="entry">
 418       <div class="title">
 419         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
 420       </div>
 421       <div class="date">
 422         10th November 2014
 423       </div>
 424       <div class="body">
 425         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 426 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 427 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 428
 429 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 430 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 431 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 432 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 433 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 434 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 435 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 436 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 437 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 438 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 439 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 440 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 441 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 442 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 443 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 444
 445 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 446 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 447 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 448 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 449 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 450 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 451 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 452 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 453 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 454 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 455 were fairly easy, and
 456 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 457 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 458 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 459 useful approach.</p>
 460
 461 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 462 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 463 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 464 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 465 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 466 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 467 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 468 this:</p>
 469
 470 <p><blockquote><pre>
 471 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 472   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 473 </pre></blockquote></p>
 474
 475 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 476 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 477
 478 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 479 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 480 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 481 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 482 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 483 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 484 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 485 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 486 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 487 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 488 system.</p>
 489
 490 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 491 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 492 SMTorP. :)</p>
 493
 494       </div>
 495       <div class="tags">
 496
 497
 498         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 499
 500
 501       </div>
 502     </div>
 503     <div class="padding"></div>
 504
 505     <div class="entry">
 506       <div class="title">
 507         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
 508       </div>
 509       <div class="date">
 510         22nd October 2014
 511       </div>
 512       <div class="body">
 513         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 514 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 515 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 516 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 517 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 518 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 519 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 520 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 521 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 522 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 523 lists I recently took over:</p>
 524
 525 <p><blockquote><pre>
 526 % time listadmin xiph
 527 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 528 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 529
 530 real    0m1.709s
 531 user    0m0.232s
 532 sys     0m0.012s
 533 %
 534 </pre></blockquote></p>
 535
 536 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 537 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 538 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 539 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 540 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 541 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 542 program.</p>
 543
 544 <p>If you install
 545 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 546 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 547 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 548
 549 <p><blockquote><pre>
 550 username username@example.org
 551 spamlevel 23
 552 default discard
 553 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 554
 555 password secret
 556 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 557 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 558
 559 password hidden
 560 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 561 </pre></blockquote></p>
 562
 563 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 564 learn the details.</p>
 565
 566 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 567 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 568 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 569 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 570
 571 <p><blockquote><pre>
 572 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 573 </pre></blockquote></p>
 574
 575 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 576 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 577 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 578 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 579 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 580 email.</p>
 581
 582 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 583 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 584 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 585 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 586 software.</p>
 587
 588 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 589 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 590 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 591
 592 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 593 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 594 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 595 sure why.</p>
 596
 597       </div>
 598       <div class="tags">
 599
 600
 601         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>.
 602
 603
 604       </div>
 605     </div>
 606     <div class="padding"></div>
 607
 608     <div class="entry">
 609       <div class="title">
 610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 611       </div>
 612       <div class="date">
 613         17th October 2014
 614       </div>
 615       <div class="body">
 616         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 617 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 618 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 619 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 620 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 621 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 622 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 623
 624 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 625 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 626 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 627 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 628 of this story.)</p>
 629
 630 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 631 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 632 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 633 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 634 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 635 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 636 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 637 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 638 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 639 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 640
 641 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 642 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 643 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 644 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 645
 646 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 647 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 648
 649 <p><blockquote><pre>
 650 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 651 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 652 </pre></blockquote></p>
 653
 654 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 655 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 656 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 657 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 658 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 659 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 660 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 661 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 662
 663 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 664 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 665
 666 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 667 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 668 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 669 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 670 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 671
 672 <p><blockquote><pre>
 673 Task: isenkram-packages
 674 Section: hardware
 675 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 676  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 677  proposed.
 678 Test-new-install: show show
 679 Relevance: 8
 680 Packages: for-current-hardware
 681
 682 Task: isenkram-firmware
 683 Section: hardware
 684 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 685  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 686  packages are proposed.
 687 Test-new-install: mark show
 688 Relevance: 8
 689 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 690 </pre></blockquote></p>
 691
 692 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 693 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 694 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 695 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 696 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 697
 698 <p><blockquote><pre>
 699 #!/bin/sh
 700 #
 701 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 702 export PATH
 703 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 704 </pre></blockquote></p>
 705
 706 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 707 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 708
 709 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 710 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 711 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 712 install.</p>
 713
 714 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 715 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 716 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 717
 718       </div>
 719       <div class="tags">
 720
 721
 722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 723
 724
 725       </div>
 726     </div>
 727     <div class="padding"></div>
 728
 729     <div class="entry">
 730       <div class="title">
 731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
 732       </div>
 733       <div class="date">
 734          4th October 2014
 735       </div>
 736       <div class="body">
 737         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 738 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 739 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 740 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
 741
 742 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
 743
 744 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 745 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 746 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
 747
 748       </div>
 749       <div class="tags">
 750
 751
 752         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>.
 753
 754
 755       </div>
 756     </div>
 757     <div class="padding"></div>
 758
 759     <div class="entry">
 760       <div class="title">
 761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
 762       </div>
 763       <div class="date">
 764          4th October 2014
 765       </div>
 766       <div class="body">
 767         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
 768 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 769 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 770 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 771 Dibb.</p>
 772
 773 <p>I just wrapped up
 774 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
 775 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
 776 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
 777 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 778 0.17.</p>
 779
 780 <ul>
 781
 782  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
 783  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 784    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
 785  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
 786  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
 787  <li>Fix include orders</li>
 788  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
 789  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
 790  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 791    the palette size is the same.</li>
 792  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
 793  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
 794  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
 795  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 796    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
 797
 798 </ul>
 799
 800 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 801 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 802 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
 803
 804       </div>
 805       <div class="tags">
 806
 807
 808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 809
 810
 811       </div>
 812     </div>
 813     <div class="padding"></div>
 814
 815     <div class="entry">
 816       <div class="title">
 817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
 818       </div>
 819       <div class="date">
 820         26th September 2014
 821       </div>
 822       <div class="body">
 823         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 824 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 825 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 826 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 827 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 828 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 829 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 830 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 831 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 832 future.  The
 833 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 834 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 835 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 836 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 837 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 838
 839 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 840 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 841 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 842 or rsync (use
 843 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 844 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 845 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 846 install with some tweaking.</p>
 847
 848 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 849 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 850
 851 <p><blockquote><pre>
 852 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 853 </pre></blockquote></p>
 854
 855 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 856 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 857 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 858 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 859
 860 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 861 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 862 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 863 your need.</p>
 864
 865 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 866 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 867 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 868 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 869 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 870 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 871 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 872 days.</p>
 873
 874 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 875 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 876 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 877 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 878 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 879 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 880 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 881 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 882 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 883
 884 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 885 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 886 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 887
 888       </div>
 889       <div class="tags">
 890
 891
 892         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>.
 893
 894
 895       </div>
 896     </div>
 897     <div class="padding"></div>
 898
 899     <div class="entry">
 900       <div class="title">
 901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
 902       </div>
 903       <div class="date">
 904         25th September 2014
 905       </div>
 906       <div class="body">
 907         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
 908 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 909 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 910 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 911 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 912 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 913 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 914 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 915 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
 916 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 917 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 918 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 919 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
 920
 921 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 922 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 923 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 924 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 925 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 926 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 927 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 928 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
 929 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
 930 list</a>. :)</p>
 931
 932       </div>
 933       <div class="tags">
 934
 935
 936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
 937
 938
 939       </div>
 940     </div>
 941     <div class="padding"></div>
 942
 943     <div class="entry">
 944       <div class="title">
 945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
 946       </div>
 947       <div class="date">
 948         16th September 2014
 949       </div>
 950       <div class="body">
 951         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
 952 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 953 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
 954 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 955 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 956 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
 957 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 958 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 959 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 960 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 961 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 962 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 963 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 964 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
 965
 966 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 967 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 968 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 969 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 970 depend on the small and clever package
 971 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
 972 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 973 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 974 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 975 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 976 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 977 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 978 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 979 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 980 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 981 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 982
 983 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 984 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 985 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 986 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 987 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 988 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 989 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 990 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 991 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 992 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 993 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 994 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 995 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 996 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 997 dialog.</p>
 998
 999 <p><table>
1000
1001 <tr>
1002 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1003 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1004 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1005 <th>Reduction</th>
1006 </tr>
1007
1008 <tr>
1009 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1010 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1011 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1012 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1013 </tr>
1014
1015 <tr>
1016 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1017 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1018 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1019 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1020 </tr>
1021
1022 <tr>
1023 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1024 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1025 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1026 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1027 </tr>
1028
1029 <tr>
1030 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1031 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1032 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1033 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1034 </tr>
1035
1036 <tr>
1037 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1038 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1039 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1040 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1041 </tr>
1042
1043 </table></p>
1044
1045 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1046 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1047 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1048 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1049 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1050 installed.</p>
1051
1052 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1053 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1054 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1055 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1056 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1057 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1058 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1059 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1060 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1061 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1062 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1063 for the entire installation.</p>
1064
1065 <p>I've implemented this in the
1066 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1067 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1068 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1069 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1070 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1071
1072 <p><blockquote><pre>
1073 #!/bin/sh
1074 set -e
1075 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1076 info() {
1077     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1078 }
1079 error() {
1080     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1081 }
1082 override_install() {
1083     apt-install eatmydata || true
1084     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1085         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1086             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1087             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1088             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1089                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1090                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1091                     > /target$file.edu
1092                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1093                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1094                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1095                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1096             else
1097                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1098             fi
1099         done
1100     else
1101         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1102     fi
1103 }
1104
1105 override_install
1106 </pre></blockquote></p>
1107
1108 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1109 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1110
1111 <p><blockquote><pre>
1112 #! /bin/sh -e
1113 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1114 error() {
1115     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1116 }
1117 remove_install_override() {
1118     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1119         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1120         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1121             rm /target$file
1122             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1123                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1124             rm /target$file.edu
1125         else
1126             error "Missing divert for $file."
1127         fi
1128     done
1129     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1130 }
1131
1132 remove_install_override
1133 </pre></blockquote></p>
1134
1135 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1136 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1137 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1138
1139 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1140 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1141 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1142 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1143 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1144 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1145 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1146 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1147 everyone.</p>
1148
1149 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1150 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1151 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1152 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1153
1154 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1155 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1156 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1157 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1158 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1159
1160 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1161 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1162 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1163 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1164 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1165
1166       </div>
1167       <div class="tags">
1168
1169
1170         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>.
1171
1172
1173       </div>
1174     </div>
1175     <div class="padding"></div>
1176
1177     <div class="entry">
1178       <div class="title">
1179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
1180       </div>
1181       <div class="date">
1182         10th September 2014
1183       </div>
1184       <div class="body">
1185         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1186 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1187 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1188 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1189 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1190 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1191 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1192 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1193 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1194 those problems are gone now.</p>
1195
1196 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1197 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1198 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1199 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1200 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1201
1202 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1203 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1204 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1205
1206 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1207 line:</p>
1208
1209 <p><blockquote><pre>
1210 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1211 </pre></blockquote></p>
1212
1213 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1214 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1215 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1216 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1217
1218 <p><blockquote><pre>
1219 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1220 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1221 %
1222 </pre></blockquote></p>
1223
1224 <p>Now if only
1225 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1226 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1227 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1228 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1229 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1230 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1231 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1232 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1233 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1234
1235       </div>
1236       <div class="tags">
1237
1238
1239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1240
1241
1242       </div>
1243     </div>
1244     <div class="padding"></div>
1245
1246     <div class="entry">
1247       <div class="title">
1248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="date">
1251         17th June 2014
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="body">
1254         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1255 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1256 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1257 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1258 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1259
1260 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1261 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1262 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1263 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1264 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1265 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1266 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1267 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1268 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1269 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1270 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1271 goals.</p>
1272
1273 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1274 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1275 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1276 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1277 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1278 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1279 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1280 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1281 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1282 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1283 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1284 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1285 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1286 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1287 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1288 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1289 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1290 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1291 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1292 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1293 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1294 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1295 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1296 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1297
1298 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1299 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1300 track the English original.  For this we use the
1301 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1302 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1303 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1304 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1305 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1306 files), which the translations update with the native language
1307 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1308 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1309 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1310 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1311 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1312 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1313 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1314 of the documentation.</p>
1315
1316 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1317 recommend using
1318 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1319 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1320 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1321 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1322 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1323 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1324 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1325 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1326
1327 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1328 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1329 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1330 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1331 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1332 translated images by storing translated versions in
1333 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1334 package maintainers know more.</p>
1335
1336 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1337 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1338 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1339 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1340 PDF version</a> or the
1341 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1342 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1343 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1344
1345 <p>To learn more, check out
1346 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1347 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1348 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1349 manual on the wiki</a> and
1350 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1351 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1352
1353       </div>
1354       <div class="tags">
1355
1356
1357         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1358
1359
1360       </div>
1361     </div>
1362     <div class="padding"></div>
1363
1364     <div class="entry">
1365       <div class="title">
1366         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
1367       </div>
1368       <div class="date">
1369         23rd April 2014
1370       </div>
1371       <div class="body">
1372         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1373 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1374 So I implemented one, using
1375 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1376 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1377 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1378 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1379 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1380 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1381
1382 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1383 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1384 packages to install.  The first part is in
1385 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1386 this:</p>
1387
1388 <p><blockquote><pre>
1389 Task: isenkram
1390 Section: hardware
1391 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1392  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1393  proposed.
1394 Test-new-install: mark show
1395 Relevance: 8
1396 Packages: for-current-hardware
1397 </pre></blockquote></p>
1398
1399 <p>The second part is in
1400 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1401 this:</p>
1402
1403 <p><blockquote><pre>
1404 #!/bin/sh
1405 #
1406 (
1407     isenkram-lookup
1408     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1409 ) | sort -u
1410 </pre></blockquote></p>
1411
1412 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1413 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1414 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1415 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1416 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1417 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1418
1419 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1420 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1421 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1422 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1423 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1424 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1425 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1426 the python-apt code (bug
1427 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1428 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1429 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1430 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1431 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1432 unstable today.</p>
1433
1434 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1435 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1436 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1437 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1438 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1439 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1440 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1441 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1442 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1443
1444 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1445 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1446 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1447 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1448 package.  See also
1449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1450 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1451 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1452 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1453
1454       </div>
1455       <div class="tags">
1456
1457
1458         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>.
1459
1460
1461       </div>
1462     </div>
1463     <div class="padding"></div>
1464
1465     <div class="entry">
1466       <div class="title">
1467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
1468       </div>
1469       <div class="date">
1470         15th April 2014
1471       </div>
1472       <div class="body">
1473         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1474 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1475 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1476 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1477 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1478 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1479
1480 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1481 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1482 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1483 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1484 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1485 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1486 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1487
1488 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1489 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1490 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1492 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1493 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1494 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1495 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1496 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1497 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1498 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1499 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1500
1501 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1502 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1503 become root:</p>
1504
1505 <p><pre>
1506 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1507   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1508   u-boot-tools
1509 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1510   freedom-maker
1511 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1512 </pre></p>
1513
1514 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1515 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1516 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1517 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1518 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1519 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1520 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1521 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1522
1523 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1524 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1525 the preseed values:</p>
1526
1527 <p><pre>
1528 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1529 </pre></p>
1530
1531 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1532 it still work.</p>
1533
1534 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1535 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1536 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1537 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1538 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1539 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1540 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1541
1542 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1543 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1544 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1545 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1546 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1547 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1548
1549       </div>
1550       <div class="tags">
1551
1552
1553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1554
1555
1556       </div>
1557     </div>
1558     <div class="padding"></div>
1559
1560     <div class="entry">
1561       <div class="title">
1562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
1563       </div>
1564       <div class="date">
1565          9th April 2014
1566       </div>
1567       <div class="body">
1568         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1569 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1570 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1571 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1572 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1573 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1574 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1575 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1576 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1577 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1578 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1579 have looked at a system called
1580 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1581 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1582
1583 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1584 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1585 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1586 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1587 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1588 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1589 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1590 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1591 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1592 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1593 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1594 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1595 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1596
1597 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1598 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1599 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1600 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1601 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1602 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1603 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1604 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1605 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1606 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1607 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1608 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1609 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1610 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1611 account.</p>
1612
1613 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1614 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1615 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1616 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1617 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
1618 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1619 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1620
1621 <p><blockquote><pre>
1622 [s3c]
1623 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1624 backend-login: API-login
1625 backend-password: API-password
1626 fs-passphrase: local-password
1627 </pre></blockquote></p>
1628
1629 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
1630 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1631 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1632 details and password to create it:</p>
1633
1634 <p><blockquote><pre>
1635 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1636 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1637   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1638 Enter backend login:
1639 Enter backend password:
1640 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1641 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1642 Enter encryption password:
1643 Confirm encryption password:
1644 Generating random encryption key...
1645 Creating metadata tables...
1646 Dumping metadata...
1647 ..objects..
1648 ..blocks..
1649 ..inodes..
1650 ..inode_blocks..
1651 ..symlink_targets..
1652 ..names..
1653 ..contents..
1654 ..ext_attributes..
1655 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1656 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1657 # </pre></blockquote></p>
1658
1659 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1660
1661 <p><blockquote><pre>
1662 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1663   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1664 Using 4 upload threads.
1665 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1666 Reading metadata...
1667 ..objects..
1668 ..blocks..
1669 ..inodes..
1670 ..inode_blocks..
1671 ..symlink_targets..
1672 ..names..
1673 ..contents..
1674 ..ext_attributes..
1675 Mounting filesystem...
1676 # df -h /s3ql
1677 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1678 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1679 #
1680 </pre></blockquote></p>
1681
1682 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1683 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1684 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1685 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1686 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1687 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1688
1689 <p><blockquote><pre>
1690 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1691 #
1692 </pre></blockquote></p>
1693
1694 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1695 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1696 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1697 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1698 file system:</p>
1699
1700 <p><blockquote><pre>
1701 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1702 Using cached metadata.
1703 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1704 Checking DB integrity...
1705 Creating temporary extra indices...
1706 Checking lost+found...
1707 Checking cached objects...
1708 Checking names (refcounts)...
1709 Checking contents (names)...
1710 Checking contents (inodes)...
1711 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1712 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1713 Checking objects (backend)...
1714 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1715 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1716 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1717 Checking objects (sizes)...
1718 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1719 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1720 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1721 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1722 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1723 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1724 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1725 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1726 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1727 Checking directory reachability...
1728 Checking unix conventions...
1729 Checking referential integrity...
1730 Dropping temporary indices...
1731 Backing up old metadata...
1732 Dumping metadata...
1733 ..objects..
1734 ..blocks..
1735 ..inodes..
1736 ..inode_blocks..
1737 ..symlink_targets..
1738 ..names..
1739 ..contents..
1740 ..ext_attributes..
1741 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1742 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1743 #
1744 </pre></blockquote></p>
1745
1746 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1747 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1748 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1749 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1750 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1751 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1752 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1753 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1754 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1755 working set.</p>
1756
1757 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1758 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1759 busy:</p>
1760
1761 <p><blockquote><pre>
1762 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1763   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1764 Using 8 upload threads.
1765 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1766 #
1767 </pre></blockquote></p>
1768
1769 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1770 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1771 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1772 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1773 s3qlctrl:
1774
1775 <p><blockquote><pre>
1776 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1777 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1778 #
1779 </pre></blockquote></p>
1780
1781 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1782 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1783 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1784 a report:</p>
1785
1786 <p><blockquote><pre>
1787 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1788 Directory entries:    9141
1789 Inodes:               9143
1790 Data blocks:          8851
1791 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1792 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1793 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1794 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1795 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1796 #
1797 </pre></blockquote></p>
1798
1799 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1800 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1801 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
1802 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
1803 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
1804 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
1805 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
1806 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1807 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1808 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1809 best.</p>
1810
1811 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1812 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1813 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1814 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1815 poster is titled
1816 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1817 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1818 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1819 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1820 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
1821
1822 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1823 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1824 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1825 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1826 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
1827 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1828 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1829 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1830
1831 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1832 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1833 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1834 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1835 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1836 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1837 only read from it.</p>
1838
1839 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1840 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1841 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1842
1843       </div>
1844       <div class="tags">
1845
1846
1847         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1848
1849
1850       </div>
1851     </div>
1852     <div class="padding"></div>
1853
1854     <div class="entry">
1855       <div class="title">
1856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="date">
1859         14th March 2014
1860       </div>
1861       <div class="body">
1862         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1863 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1864 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1865 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1866 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1867 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1868 release (0.2).</p>
1869
1870 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1871 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1872 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1873 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1874 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1875 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1876 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1877 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1878 and build using
1879 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
1880 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1881
1882 <pre>
1883 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1884   freedom-maker
1885 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1886   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1887   u-boot-tools
1888 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1889 </pre>
1890
1891 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1892 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1893 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
1894 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1895 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1896 kpartx call.</p>
1897
1898 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1899 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1900 the preseed values:</p>
1901
1902 <pre>
1903 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1904 </pre>
1905
1906 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1907 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
1908 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1909 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1910 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1911 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
1912
1913 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1914 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1915 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1916 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1917 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1918 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1919
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="tags">
1922
1923
1924         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1925
1926
1927       </div>
1928     </div>
1929     <div class="padding"></div>
1930
1931     <div class="entry">
1932       <div class="title">
1933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
1934       </div>
1935       <div class="date">
1936         22nd February 2014
1937       </div>
1938       <div class="body">
1939         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1940 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1941 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1942 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1943 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1944 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1945 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1946 proper home since then.</p>
1947
1948 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1949 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1950 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1951 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1952 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1953
1954 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1955 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1956 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1957 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1958 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1959 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1960 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1961 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1962 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1963
1964       </div>
1965       <div class="tags">
1966
1967
1968         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>.
1969
1970
1971       </div>
1972     </div>
1973     <div class="padding"></div>
1974
1975     <div class="entry">
1976       <div class="title">
1977         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1978       </div>
1979       <div class="date">
1980          3rd February 2014
1981       </div>
1982       <div class="body">
1983         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1984 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1985 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1986 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1987 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1988 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1989 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1990 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
1991 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1992
1993 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1994 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1995 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1996 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1997 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1998 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
1999
2000 <p><blockquote><pre>
2001 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2002 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2003 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2004 dhclient /dev/eth0
2005 </pre></blockquote></p>
2006
2007 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2008 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2009 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2010
2011 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2012 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2013 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2014 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2015 side.</p>
2016
2017 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2018 stuff:</p>
2019
2020 <p><blockquote><pre>
2021 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2022 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2023 EOF
2024 apt-get update
2025 apt-get dist-upgrade
2026 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2027     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2028 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2029 </pre></blockquote></p>
2030
2031 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2032 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2033 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2034 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2035 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2036 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2037 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2038 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2039 ssh instead.
2040
2041 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2042 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2043 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2044 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2045 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2046 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2047
2048 <p><blockquote><pre>
2049 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2050 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2051 EOF
2052 </pre></blockquote></p>
2053
2054 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2055 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2056 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2057 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2058
2059 <p><blockquote><pre>
2060 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2061 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2062 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2063 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2064 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2065 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2066 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2067 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2068 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2069 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2070 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2071 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2072 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2073 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2074 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2075 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2076 #
2077 </pre></blockquote></p>
2078
2079 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2080 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2081 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2082 command line stuff.<p>
2083
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="tags">
2086
2087
2088         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>.
2089
2090
2091       </div>
2092     </div>
2093     <div class="padding"></div>
2094
2095     <div class="entry">
2096       <div class="title">
2097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2098       </div>
2099       <div class="date">
2100         14th January 2014
2101       </div>
2102       <div class="body">
2103         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2104 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2105 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2106 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2107 the source.  The company behind it provide
2108 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2109 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2110 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2111 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2112 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2113 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2114 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2115 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2116 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2117 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2118 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2119 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2120 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2121 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2122 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2123 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2124 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2125 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2126 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2127
2128 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2129
2130 <ul>
2131
2132   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2133   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2134   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2135
2136 </ul>
2137
2138 <p>You can
2139 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2140 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2141 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2142 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2143 include a test suite check.</p>
2144
2145       </div>
2146       <div class="tags">
2147
2148
2149         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2150
2151
2152       </div>
2153     </div>
2154     <div class="padding"></div>
2155
2156     <div class="entry">
2157       <div class="title">
2158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2159       </div>
2160       <div class="date">
2161         24th November 2013
2162       </div>
2163       <div class="body">
2164         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2165 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2166 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2167 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2168 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2169 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2170 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2171 is working on.  I checked the
2172 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2173 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2174 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2175 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2176 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2177 These are the release notes:</p>
2178
2179 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2180
2181 <ul>
2182
2183   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2184    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2185    up.</li>
2186
2187   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2188
2189   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2190    Matthias Klose.</li>
2191
2192   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2193    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2194
2195   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2196    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2197    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2198
2199 </ul>
2200
2201 <p>You can
2202 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2203 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2204 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2205 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2206 include a testsuite check.</p>
2207
2208       </div>
2209       <div class="tags">
2210
2211
2212         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2213
2214
2215       </div>
2216     </div>
2217     <div class="padding"></div>
2218
2219     <div class="entry">
2220       <div class="title">
2221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
2222       </div>
2223       <div class="date">
2224          2nd November 2013
2225       </div>
2226       <div class="body">
2227         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2228 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2229 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2230 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2231 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2232
2233 <p><pre>
2234 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2235 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2236 # Provides:          rsyslog
2237 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2238 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2239 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2240 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2241 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2242 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2243 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2244 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2245 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2246 ### END INIT INFO
2247 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2248 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2249 </pre></p>
2250
2251 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2252 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2253 info/comments.</p>
2254
2255 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2256 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2257
2258 <p><pre>
2259 #!/bin/sh
2260
2261 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2262 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2263 # and status_of_proc is working.
2264 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2265
2266 #
2267 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2268
2269 #
2270 do_start()
2271 {
2272         # Return
2273         #   0 if daemon has been started
2274         #   1 if daemon was already running
2275         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2276         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2277                 || return 1
2278         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2279                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2280                 || return 2
2281         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2282         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2283         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2284 }
2285
2286 #
2287 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2288 #
2289 do_stop()
2290 {
2291         # Return
2292         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2293         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2294         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2295         #   other if a failure occurred
2296         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2297         RETVAL="$?"
2298         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2299         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2300         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2301         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2302         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2303         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2304         # sleep for some time.
2305         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2306         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2307         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2308         rm -f $PIDFILE
2309         return "$RETVAL"
2310 }
2311
2312 #
2313 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2314 #
2315 do_reload() {
2316         #
2317         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2318         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2319         # then implement that here.
2320         #
2321         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2322         return 0
2323 }
2324
2325 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2326 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2327 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2328 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2329     script="$1"
2330     shift
2331     . $script
2332 else
2333     exit 0
2334 fi
2335
2336 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2337 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2338
2339 # Exit if the package is not installed
2340 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2341
2342 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2343 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2344
2345 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2346 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2347
2348 case "$1" in
2349   start)
2350         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2351         do_start
2352         case "$?" in
2353                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2354                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2355         esac
2356         ;;
2357   stop)
2358         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2359         do_stop
2360         case "$?" in
2361                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2362                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2363         esac
2364         ;;
2365   status)
2366         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2367         ;;
2368   #reload|force-reload)
2369         #
2370         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2371         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2372         #
2373         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2374         #do_reload
2375         #log_end_msg $?
2376         #;;
2377   restart|force-reload)
2378         #
2379         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2380         # 'force-reload' alias
2381         #
2382         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2383         do_stop
2384         case "$?" in
2385           0|1)
2386                 do_start
2387                 case "$?" in
2388                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2389                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2390                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2391                 esac
2392                 ;;
2393           *)
2394                 # Failed to stop
2395                 log_end_msg 1
2396                 ;;
2397         esac
2398         ;;
2399   *)
2400         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2401         exit 3
2402         ;;
2403 esac
2404
2405 :
2406 </pre></p>
2407
2408 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2409 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2410 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2411 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2412
2413 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2414 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2415 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2416 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2417 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2418
2419       </div>
2420       <div class="tags">
2421
2422
2423         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>.
2424
2425
2426       </div>
2427     </div>
2428     <div class="padding"></div>
2429
2430     <div class="entry">
2431       <div class="title">
2432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
2433       </div>
2434       <div class="date">
2435          1st November 2013
2436       </div>
2437       <div class="body">
2438         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2439 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2440 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2441 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2442 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2443 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2444 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2445 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2446 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2447 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2448 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2449 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2450
2451 <p>The source is now available from
2452 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
2453
2454       </div>
2455       <div class="tags">
2456
2457
2458         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>.
2459
2460
2461       </div>
2462     </div>
2463     <div class="padding"></div>
2464
2465     <div class="entry">
2466       <div class="title">
2467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
2468       </div>
2469       <div class="date">
2470         27th October 2013
2471       </div>
2472       <div class="body">
2473         <p>The
2474 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2475 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2476 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2477 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2478 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2479 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2480 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2481 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2482 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2483 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2484 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2485 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2486
2487 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2488 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2489 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2490 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2491 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2492 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2493 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2494 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2495 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2496 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2497 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2498 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2499 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2500 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2501 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2502 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2503 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2504 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2505 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2506 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2507 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2508 available from
2509 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2510 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2511
2512 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2513 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2514 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2515 list:</p>
2516
2517 <p><pre>
2518 #!/bin/sh
2519 set -e # Exit on first error
2520 rootdir="$1"
2521 cd "$rootdir"
2522 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2523 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2524 EOF
2525 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2526 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2527 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2528     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2529 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2530 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2531 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2532 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2533 </pre></p>
2534
2535 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2536 to build the image:</p>
2537
2538 <pre>
2539 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2540     --variant minbase \
2541     --arch armel \
2542     --distribution jessie \
2543     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2544     --image test.img \
2545     --size 600M \
2546     --bootsize 64M \
2547     --boottype vfat \
2548     --log-level debug \
2549     --verbose \
2550     --no-kernel \
2551     --no-extlinux \
2552     --root-password raspberry \
2553     --hostname raspberrypi \
2554     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2555     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2556     --package netbase \
2557     --package git-core \
2558     --package binutils \
2559     --package ca-certificates \
2560     --package wget \
2561     --package kmod
2562 </pre></p>
2563
2564 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2565 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2566 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2567 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2568 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2569 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2570 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2571
2572 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2573 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2574 build dependency list.</p>
2575
2576 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2577 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2578 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2579 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2580
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="tags">
2583
2584
2585         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
2586
2587
2588       </div>
2589     </div>
2590     <div class="padding"></div>
2591
2592     <div class="entry">
2593       <div class="title">
2594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
2595       </div>
2596       <div class="date">
2597         15th October 2013
2598       </div>
2599       <div class="body">
2600         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2601 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2602 these. :)</p>
2603
2604 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2605 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2606 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2607 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2608 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2609 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2610 hope you will to. :)</p>
2611
2612 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2613 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2614 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2615 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2616 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2617
2618 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2619 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2620 statement under the heading
2621 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2622 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2623 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2624 too.</p>
2625
2626       </div>
2627       <div class="tags">
2628
2629
2630         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2631
2632
2633       </div>
2634     </div>
2635     <div class="padding"></div>
2636
2637     <div class="entry">
2638       <div class="title">
2639         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
2640       </div>
2641       <div class="date">
2642         27th September 2013
2643       </div>
2644       <div class="body">
2645         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2646 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2647 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2648 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2649
2650 <ul>
2651
2652 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2653 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2654
2655 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2656 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2657
2658 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2659 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2660 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2661 (Youtube)</li>
2662
2663 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2664 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2665
2666 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2667 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2668
2669 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2670 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2671 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2672
2673 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2674 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2675 (Youtube)</li>
2676
2677 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2678 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2679
2680 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2681 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2682
2683 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2684 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2685 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2686
2687 </ul>
2688
2689 <p>A larger list is available from
2690 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2691 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2692
2693 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2694 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2695 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2696 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2697 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2698 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2699 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2700 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2701 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2702 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2703 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2704
2705       </div>
2706       <div class="tags">
2707
2708
2709         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2710
2711
2712       </div>
2713     </div>
2714     <div class="padding"></div>
2715
2716     <div class="entry">
2717       <div class="title">
2718         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
2719       </div>
2720       <div class="date">
2721         10th September 2013
2722       </div>
2723       <div class="body">
2724         <p>I was introduced to the
2725 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2726 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2727 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2728 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2729 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2730 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2731 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2732 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2733
2734 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2735 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2736 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2737 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2738 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2739
2740 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2741 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2742 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2743 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2744 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2745 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2746 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2747 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2748 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2749 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2750 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2751 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2752 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2753 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2754 missing in Debian).</p>
2755
2756 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2757 scripts
2758 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2759 and a administrative web interface
2760 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2761 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2762 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2763 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2764 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2765 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2766 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2767 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2768 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2769 this is really working yet, see
2770 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2771 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2772 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2773 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2774 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2775 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2776 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2777
2778 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2779 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2780 at.</p>
2781
2782 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2783
2784 <ol>
2785
2786 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2787 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2788 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2789 to the Debian installer:<p>
2790 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2791
2792 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2793 install on.</li>
2794
2795 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2796 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2797
2798 </ol>
2799
2800 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2801
2802 <ol>
2803
2804 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2805 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2806 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2807 <pre>
2808 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2809 </pre></li>
2810 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2811 <pre>
2812 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2813    apt-key add -
2814 apt-get update
2815 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2816 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2817 </pre></li>
2818 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2819
2820 </ol>
2821
2822 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2823 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2824 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2825 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2826 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2827
2828 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2829 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2830 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2831 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2832
2833 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2834 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2835 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2836 irc.debian.org and the
2837 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2838 mailing list</a>.</p>
2839
2840 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2841 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2842 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2843 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2844 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2845 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2846
2847       </div>
2848       <div class="tags">
2849
2850
2851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2852
2853
2854       </div>
2855     </div>
2856     <div class="padding"></div>
2857
2858     <div class="entry">
2859       <div class="title">
2860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
2861       </div>
2862       <div class="date">
2863         18th August 2013
2864       </div>
2865       <div class="body">
2866         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2867 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2868 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2869 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2870 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2871 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2872 currently on the disk.</p>
2873
2874 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2875 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
2876 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2877 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2878 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2879 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2880 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2881 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2882 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2883 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2884 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2885 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2886 the broken disks.</p>
2887
2888       </div>
2889       <div class="tags">
2890
2891
2892         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>.
2893
2894
2895       </div>
2896     </div>
2897     <div class="padding"></div>
2898
2899     <div class="entry">
2900       <div class="title">
2901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
2902       </div>
2903       <div class="date">
2904         17th July 2013
2905       </div>
2906       <div class="body">
2907         <p>Today I switched to
2908 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2909 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2910 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2911 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
2912 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2913 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2914 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2915 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2916 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2917 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2918 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2919 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2920 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2921 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2922 station from now on.</p>
2923
2924 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2925 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2926 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2927 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2928 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2929 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2930 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2931 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2932 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2933 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2934 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2935 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2936
2937 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2938 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2939 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2940 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2941 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2942 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2943 parameters are tuned:</p>
2944
2945 <ul>
2946
2947 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2948     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2949
2950 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2951     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2952     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2953
2954 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2955     systems.</li>
2956
2957 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2958     /etc/fstab.</li>
2959
2960 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2961
2962 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2963     cron.daily).</li>
2964
2965 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2966     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2967
2968 </ul>
2969
2970 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2971 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2972 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2973 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2974 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2975 from getting the data on the disk (see
2976 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2977 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2978 right thing to do.</p>
2979
2980 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2981 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2982 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2983
2984 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2985 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2986 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2987 instead of during my work.</p>
2988
2989 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2990 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2991
2992 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2993 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2994 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2995
2996 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2997 there.</p>
2998
2999 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3000 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3001 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3002 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3003 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3004 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3005 back.</p>
3006
3007       </div>
3008       <div class="tags">
3009
3010
3011         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>.
3012
3013
3014       </div>
3015     </div>
3016     <div class="padding"></div>
3017
3018     <div class="entry">
3019       <div class="title">
3020         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3021       </div>
3022       <div class="date">
3023         10th July 2013
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="body">
3026         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3027 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3028 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3029 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3030 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3031 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3032 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3033 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3034
3035 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3036 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3037 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3038 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3039 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3040 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3041 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3042 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3043 lock up when I download a new
3044 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3045 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3046 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3047
3048 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3049 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3050 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3051 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3052 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3053 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3054
3055 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3056 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3057 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3058 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3059 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3060 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3061
3062 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3063 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3064 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3065 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3066 exist).</p>
3067
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="tags">
3070
3071
3072         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>.
3073
3074
3075       </div>
3076     </div>
3077     <div class="padding"></div>
3078
3079     <div class="entry">
3080       <div class="title">
3081         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
3082       </div>
3083       <div class="date">
3084          9th July 2013
3085       </div>
3086       <div class="body">
3087         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3088 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3089 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3090 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3091 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3092 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3093 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3094
3095 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3096 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3097 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3098 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3099 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3100
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="tags">
3103
3104
3105         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>.
3106
3107
3108       </div>
3109     </div>
3110     <div class="padding"></div>
3111
3112     <div class="entry">
3113       <div class="title">
3114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
3115       </div>
3116       <div class="date">
3117          5th July 2013
3118       </div>
3119       <div class="body">
3120         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3121 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3122 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3123 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3124 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3125 ended up picking a
3126 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3127 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3128 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3129 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3130 on that below.</p>
3131
3132 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3133 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3134 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3135 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3136 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3137 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3138 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3139 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3140 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3141
3142 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3143 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3144 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3145 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3146 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3147 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3148 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3149
3150 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3151 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3152
3153 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3154 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3155 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3156 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3157 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3158 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3159 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3160 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3161 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3162 kernel developers as
3163 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3164 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3165 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3166 Lenovo forums, both for
3167 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3168 2012-11-10</a> and for
3169 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
3170 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3171 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3172 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3173 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3174 There is even a
3175 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3176 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3177 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3178
3179 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3180 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3181 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3182 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3183 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3184 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3185 fixed. :)</p>
3186
3187       </div>
3188       <div class="tags">
3189
3190
3191         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>.
3192
3193
3194       </div>
3195     </div>
3196     <div class="padding"></div>
3197
3198     <div class="entry">
3199       <div class="title">
3200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
3201       </div>
3202       <div class="date">
3203          4th July 2013
3204       </div>
3205       <div class="body">
3206         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3207 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3208 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3209 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3210 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3211 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3212 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3213 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3214 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3215
3216 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3217 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3218 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3219 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3220 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3221 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3222 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3223
3224 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3225 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3226 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3227 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3228 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3229 new laptop now. :)</p>
3230
3231 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3232
3233       </div>
3234       <div class="tags">
3235
3236
3237         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>.
3238
3239
3240       </div>
3241     </div>
3242     <div class="padding"></div>
3243
3244     <div class="entry">
3245       <div class="title">
3246         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
3247       </div>
3248       <div class="date">
3249         25th June 2013
3250       </div>
3251       <div class="body">
3252         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3253 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3254 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3255 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3256 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3257 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3258 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3259 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3260 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3261 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3262 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3263
3264 <p><pre>
3265 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3266 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3267 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3268 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3269 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3270 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3271 firmware-ipw2x00
3272 firmware-ipw2x00
3273 Preconfiguring packages ...
3274 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3275 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3276 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3277 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3278 #
3279 </pre></p>
3280
3281 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3282 printed instead:</p>
3283
3284 <p><pre>
3285 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3286 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3287 #
3288 </pre></p>
3289
3290 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3291 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3292
3293 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3294 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3295 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3296 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3297 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3298 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3299 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3300 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3301 machine.</p>
3302
3303 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3304 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3305 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3306 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3307 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3308 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3309
3310       </div>
3311       <div class="tags">
3312
3313
3314         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>.
3315
3316
3317       </div>
3318     </div>
3319     <div class="padding"></div>
3320
3321     <div class="entry">
3322       <div class="title">
3323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
3324       </div>
3325       <div class="date">
3326         11th June 2013
3327       </div>
3328       <div class="body">
3329         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3330 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3331 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3332 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3333 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3334 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3335 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3336 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3337 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3338 i915 driver used by the
3339 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3340 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3341
3342 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3343 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3344 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3345 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3346 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3347
3348 <pre>
3349 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3350 update-initramfs -u -k all
3351 </pre>
3352
3353 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3354 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3355 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3356 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3357 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3358 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3359 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3360 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3361 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3362 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3363 number.</p>
3364
3365 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3366 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3367
3368 <p><pre>
3369 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3370     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3371     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3372  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3373  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3374     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3375  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3376     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3377  Latency: 0
3378  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3379  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3380  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3381  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3382  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3383  Capabilities: <access denied>
3384  Kernel driver in use: i915
3385 </pre></p>
3386
3387 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3388
3389 <p><pre>
3390 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3391        ...
3392         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3393         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3394        ...
3395 }
3396 </pre></p>
3397
3398 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3399 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3400 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3401 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3402 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3403 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3404 yet shown up in
3405 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3406 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3407 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3408 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3409 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3410 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3411
3412 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3413 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3414 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3415 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3416 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3417 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3418 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3419 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3420 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3421 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3422 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3423 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3424
3425 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3426 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3427 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3428 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3429 backlight.</p>
3430
3431       </div>
3432       <div class="tags">
3433
3434
3435         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>.
3436
3437
3438       </div>
3439     </div>
3440     <div class="padding"></div>
3441
3442     <div class="entry">
3443       <div class="title">
3444         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="date">
3447         27th May 2013
3448       </div>
3449       <div class="body">
3450         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3451 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
3452 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3453 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3454 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3455 and Windows 8.</p>
3456
3457 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3458 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3459 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3460 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3461 enough to tell.</p>
3462
3463 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3464 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3465 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3466 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3467 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3468 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3469 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3470 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3471 to follow.</p>
3472
3473 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3474 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3475 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3476 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3477 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3478 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3479 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3480 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3481
3482 <p>I've updated the
3483 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3484 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3485 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3486 machine.</p>
3487
3488 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3489 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3490
3491       </div>
3492       <div class="tags">
3493
3494
3495         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>.
3496
3497
3498       </div>
3499     </div>
3500     <div class="padding"></div>
3501
3502     <div class="entry">
3503       <div class="title">
3504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="date">
3507         25th May 2013
3508       </div>
3509       <div class="body">
3510         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3511 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3512 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3513 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3514 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3515 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3516
3517 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3518 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3519 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3520 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3521 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3522 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3523 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3524 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3525 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3526 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3527
3528 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3529 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3530 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3531 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3532 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3533 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3534
3535 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3536 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3537 on new Laptops?</p>
3538
3539       </div>
3540       <div class="tags">
3541
3542
3543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3544
3545
3546       </div>
3547     </div>
3548     <div class="padding"></div>
3549
3550     <div class="entry">
3551       <div class="title">
3552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
3553       </div>
3554       <div class="date">
3555         17th May 2013
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="body">
3558         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3559 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3560 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3561 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3562 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3563 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3564 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3565 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3566 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3567 donate some money</a>.
3568
3569 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3570 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3571 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3572 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3573 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3574
3575 <p>The script,
3576 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
3577 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3578 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3579 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3580
3581 <ol>
3582
3583 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3584 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3585 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3586     our configuration.</li>
3587 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3588     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3589     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3590     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3591 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3592     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3593 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3594
3595 </ol>
3596
3597 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3598 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3599 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3600 the needed packages.</p>
3601
3602 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3603 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3604 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3605 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3606 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3607 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3608
3609 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3610 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3611 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3612
3613 <p><pre>
3614 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3615 DESKTOP="lxde"
3616 </pre></p>
3617
3618 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3619 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3620 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3621 boot.</p>
3622
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="tags">
3625
3626
3627         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>.
3628
3629
3630       </div>
3631     </div>
3632     <div class="padding"></div>
3633
3634     <div class="entry">
3635       <div class="title">
3636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="date">
3639         11th May 2013
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="body">
3642         <P>In January,
3643 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3644 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3645 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3646 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3647 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3648 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3649 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3650 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3651 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3652 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3653 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3654 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3655
3656 <p><table>
3657 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
3658 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3659 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
3660 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3661 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3662 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3663 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
3664 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
3665 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
3666 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3667 </table></p>
3668
3669 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3670 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3671 available in experimental.</p>
3672
3673 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3674 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3675 for LEGO designers.</p>
3676
3677       </div>
3678       <div class="tags">
3679
3680
3681         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>.
3682
3683
3684       </div>
3685     </div>
3686     <div class="padding"></div>
3687
3688     <div class="entry">
3689       <div class="title">
3690         <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>
3691       </div>
3692       <div class="date">
3693          5th May 2013
3694       </div>
3695       <div class="body">
3696         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3697 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3698 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3699 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3700 soon.</p>
3701
3702 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3703 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3704 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3705 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3706 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3707 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3708 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3709 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3710 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3711 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3712 Edu.</a>
3713
3714 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3715 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3716 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3717 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3718 follow.<p>
3719
3720       </div>
3721       <div class="tags">
3722
3723
3724         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>.
3725
3726
3727       </div>
3728     </div>
3729     <div class="padding"></div>
3730
3731     <div class="entry">
3732       <div class="title">
3733         <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>
3734       </div>
3735       <div class="date">
3736          3rd April 2013
3737       </div>
3738       <div class="body">
3739         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3740 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3741 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3742 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3743
3744 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3745 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3746 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3747 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3748 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3749 BTS. :)</p>
3750
3751       </div>
3752       <div class="tags">
3753
3754
3755         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>.
3756
3757
3758       </div>
3759     </div>
3760     <div class="padding"></div>
3761
3762     <div class="entry">
3763       <div class="title">
3764         <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>
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="date">
3767          2nd February 2013
3768       </div>
3769       <div class="body">
3770         <p>My
3771 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
3772 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
3773 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
3774 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3775 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
3776 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3777 version too.</p>
3778
3779 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3780 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3781 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3782 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3783 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
3784 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3785 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
3786 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
3787
3788 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3789 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3790 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
3791 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3792 it. :)</p>
3793
3794 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3795 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3796 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3797
3798       </div>
3799       <div class="tags">
3800
3801
3802         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>.
3803
3804
3805       </div>
3806     </div>
3807     <div class="padding"></div>
3808
3809     <div class="entry">
3810       <div class="title">
3811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
3812       </div>
3813       <div class="date">
3814         22nd January 2013
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="body">
3817         <p>Yesterday, I
3818 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
3819 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3820 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3821 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
3822 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
3823 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3824 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3825 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3826 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
3827 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3828 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
3829 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
3830 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
3831
3832 <pre>
3833 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3834 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
3835 </pre>
3836
3837 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
3838 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3839 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3840 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
3841
3842 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3843 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
3844 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3845 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3846 word.</p>
3847
3848 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
3849 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3850 process.</p>
3851
3852 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3853 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
3854
3855       </div>
3856       <div class="tags">
3857
3858
3859         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>.
3860
3861
3862       </div>
3863     </div>
3864     <div class="padding"></div>
3865
3866     <div class="entry">
3867       <div class="title">
3868         <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>
3869       </div>
3870       <div class="date">
3871         21st January 2013
3872       </div>
3873       <div class="body">
3874         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
3875 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
3876 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
3877 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
3878 it, fetch the
3879 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
3880 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
3881 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
3882 autostart script.</p>
3883
3884 <p>The design is simple:</p>
3885
3886 <ul>
3887
3888 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3889 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
3890
3891 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3892 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3893 initially did.</li>
3894
3895 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3896 the APT database, a database
3897 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
3898 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
3899
3900 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3901 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3902 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3903 package or packages.</li>
3904
3905 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
3906 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
3907
3908 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3909 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
3910
3911 </ul>
3912
3913 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
3914 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
3915 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3916 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
3917
3918 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
3919 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
3920 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
3921 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
3922 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
3923
3924 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3925 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
3926 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3927 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3928 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3929 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3930 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3931 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
3932
3933 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
3934 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3935 '<tt>svn checkout
3936 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3937 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
3938 devscripts package.</p>
3939
3940 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
3941 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3942 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3943 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
3944 instructions</a> for details.</p>
3945
3946       </div>
3947       <div class="tags">
3948
3949
3950         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>.
3951
3952
3953       </div>
3954     </div>
3955     <div class="padding"></div>
3956
3957     <div class="entry">
3958       <div class="title">
3959         <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>
3960       </div>
3961       <div class="date">
3962         19th January 2013
3963       </div>
3964       <div class="body">
3965         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3966 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3967 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3968 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3969 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3970 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3971 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3972 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3973 not a durable solution.
3974
3975 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3976 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
3977
3978 <ul>
3979
3980 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3981   than A4).</li>
3982 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
3983 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
3984 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
3985 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
3986 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
3987 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
3988 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
3989 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
3990 size).</li>
3991 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3992   X.org packages.</li>
3993 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3994   the time).
3995
3996 </ul>
3997
3998 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3999 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4000 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4001 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4002 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4003 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4004 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4005 still be useful.</p>
4006
4007 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4008 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4009 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4010 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4011 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4012 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4013
4014       </div>
4015       <div class="tags">
4016
4017
4018         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>.
4019
4020
4021       </div>
4022     </div>
4023     <div class="padding"></div>
4024
4025     <div class="entry">
4026       <div class="title">
4027         <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>
4028       </div>
4029       <div class="date">
4030         18th January 2013
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="body">
4033         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4034 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4035 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4036 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4037 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4038 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4039 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4040
4041 <pre>
4042 #!/usr/bin/python
4043 import sys
4044 import apt
4045 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4046     cache = apt.Cache()
4047     cache.open(None)
4048     thepkgs = []
4049     for pkg in cache:
4050         version = pkg.candidate
4051         if version is None:
4052             version = pkg.installed
4053         if version is None:
4054             continue
4055         record = version.record
4056         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4057             continue
4058         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4059         for t in mime_types:
4060             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4061             if t == mimetype:
4062                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4063     return thepkgs
4064 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4065 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4066     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4067 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4068 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4069     print "  %s" %pkg
4070 </pre>
4071
4072 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4073
4074 <pre>
4075 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4076 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4077   gecko-mediaplayer
4078 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4079 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4080   browser-plugin-gnash
4081 %
4082 </pre>
4083
4084 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4085 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4086 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4087 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4088
4089 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4090 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4091 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4092 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4093 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4094 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4095
4096       </div>
4097       <div class="tags">
4098
4099
4100         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>.
4101
4102
4103       </div>
4104     </div>
4105     <div class="padding"></div>
4106
4107     <div class="entry">
4108       <div class="title">
4109         <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>
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="date">
4112         16th January 2013
4113       </div>
4114       <div class="body">
4115         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4116 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4117 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4118 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4119 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4120 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4121 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4122 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4123
4124 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4125 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4126 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4127 can be found on the
4128 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4129 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4130 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4131 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4132 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4133
4134 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4135
4136 <pre>
4137   count MIME type
4138   ----- -----------------------
4139      32 text/plain
4140      30 audio/mpeg
4141      29 image/png
4142      28 image/jpeg
4143      27 application/ogg
4144      26 audio/x-mp3
4145      25 image/tiff
4146      25 image/gif
4147      22 image/bmp
4148      22 audio/x-wav
4149      20 audio/x-flac
4150      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4151      18 video/x-ms-asf
4152      18 audio/x-musepack
4153      18 audio/x-mpeg
4154      18 application/x-ogg
4155      17 video/mpeg
4156      17 audio/x-scpls
4157      17 audio/ogg
4158      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4159 </pre>
4160
4161 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4162
4163 <pre>
4164   count MIME type
4165   ----- -----------------------
4166      33 text/plain
4167      32 image/png
4168      32 image/jpeg
4169      29 audio/mpeg
4170      27 image/gif
4171      26 image/tiff
4172      26 application/ogg
4173      25 audio/x-mp3
4174      22 image/bmp
4175      21 audio/x-wav
4176      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4177      19 audio/x-mpeg
4178      18 video/mpeg
4179      18 audio/x-scpls
4180      18 audio/x-flac
4181      18 application/x-ogg
4182      17 video/x-ms-asf
4183      17 text/html
4184      17 audio/x-musepack
4185      16 image/x-xbitmap
4186 </pre>
4187
4188 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4189
4190 <pre>
4191   count MIME type
4192   ----- -----------------------
4193      31 text/plain
4194      31 image/png
4195      31 image/jpeg
4196      29 audio/mpeg
4197      28 application/ogg
4198      27 image/gif
4199      26 image/tiff
4200      26 audio/x-mp3
4201      23 audio/x-wav
4202      22 image/bmp
4203      21 audio/x-flac
4204      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4205      19 audio/x-mpeg
4206      18 video/x-ms-asf
4207      18 video/mpeg
4208      18 audio/x-scpls
4209      18 application/x-ogg
4210      17 audio/x-musepack
4211      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4212      16 video/x-msvideo
4213 </pre>
4214
4215 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4216 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4217 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4218 issues.</p>
4219
4220 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4221 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4222
4223       </div>
4224       <div class="tags">
4225
4226
4227         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>.
4228
4229
4230       </div>
4231     </div>
4232     <div class="padding"></div>
4233
4234     <div class="entry">
4235       <div class="title">
4236         <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>
4237       </div>
4238       <div class="date">
4239         15th January 2013
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="body">
4242         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4244 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4245 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4246 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4247 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4248 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4249 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4250 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4251 packages.</p>
4252
4253 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4254 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4255 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4256 modalias.</p>
4257
4258 <p><blockquote>
4259 Package: package-name
4260 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4261 </blockquote></p>
4262
4263 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4264 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4265
4266 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4267 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4268
4269 <p><blockquote>
4270 Package: cheese
4271 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4272 </blockquote></p>
4273
4274 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4275 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4276
4277 <p><blockquote>
4278 Package: pcmciautils
4279 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4280 </blockquote></p>
4281
4282 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4283 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4284
4285 <p><blockquote>
4286 Package: colorhug-client
4287 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4288 </blockquote></p>
4289
4290 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4291 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4292 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4293
4294 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4295 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4296 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4297 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4298 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4299 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4300 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4301 Raring.</p>
4302
4303 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4304 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4305 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4306 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4307 try the
4308 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4309 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4310 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4311 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4312
4313 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4314 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4315
4316 <p><blockquote>
4317 % ./hw-support-lookup
4318 <br>yubikey-personalization
4319 <br>%
4320 </blockquote></p>
4321
4322 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4323 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4324
4325 <p><blockquote>
4326 % ./hw-support-lookup
4327 <br>pcmciautils
4328 <br>%
4329 </blockquote></p>
4330
4331 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4332 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4333 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4334
4335 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4336 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4337 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4338 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4339 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4340 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4341 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4342 see if it work.</p>
4343
4344 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4345 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4346 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4347 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4348
4349       </div>
4350       <div class="tags">
4351
4352
4353         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>.
4354
4355
4356       </div>
4357     </div>
4358     <div class="padding"></div>
4359
4360     <div class="entry">
4361       <div class="title">
4362         <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>
4363       </div>
4364       <div class="date">
4365         14th January 2013
4366       </div>
4367       <div class="body">
4368         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4369 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4370 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4371 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4372 in
4373 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4374 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4375
4376 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4377
4378 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4379 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4380 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4381 &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;,
4382 &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
4383 &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;.
4384
4385 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4386 this shell script:</p>
4387
4388 <pre>
4389 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4390 </pre>
4391
4392 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4393 using modinfo:</p>
4394
4395 <pre>
4396 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4397 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4398 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4399 %
4400 </pre>
4401
4402 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4403
4404 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4405 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4406
4407 <p><blockquote>
4408 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4409 </blockquote></p>
4410
4411 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4412
4413 <pre>
4414  v   00008086  (vendor)
4415  d   00002770  (device)
4416  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4417  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4418  bc  06        (bus class)
4419  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4420  i   00        (interface)
4421 </pre>
4422
4423 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4424 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4425 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4426 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4427
4428 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4429 means.</p>
4430
4431 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4432
4433 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4434 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4435
4436 <p><blockquote>
4437 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4438 </blockquote></p>
4439
4440 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4441
4442 <pre>
4443  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4444  p    0001  (device product)
4445  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4446  dc     09  (device class)
4447  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4448  dp     00  (device protocol)
4449  ic     09  (interface class)
4450  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4451  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4452 </pre>
4453
4454 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4455 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4456 these alias entries show up:</p>
4457
4458 <p><blockquote>
4459 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4460 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4461 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4462 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4463 </blockquote></p>
4464
4465 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4466 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4467 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4468
4469 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4470
4471 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4472 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4473
4474 <p><blockquote>
4475 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4476 </blockquote></p>
4477
4478 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4479
4480 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4481
4482 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4483 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4484 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4485
4486 <p><blockquote>
4487 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4488 </blockquote></p>
4489
4490 <p>The values present are</p>
4491
4492 <pre>
4493  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4494  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4495  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4496  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4497  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4498  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4499  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4500  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4501  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4502  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4503  ct   10             (chassis type)
4504  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4505 </pre>
4506
4507 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4508 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4509
4510 <pre>
4511   3 Desktop
4512   4 Low Profile Desktop
4513   5 Pizza Box
4514   6 Mini Tower
4515   7 Tower
4516   8 Portable
4517   9 Laptop
4518  10 Notebook
4519  11 Hand Held
4520  12 Docking Station
4521  13 All In One
4522  14 Sub Notebook
4523  15 Space-saving
4524  16 Lunch Box
4525  17 Main Server Chassis
4526  18 Expansion Chassis
4527  19 Sub Chassis
4528  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4529  21 Peripheral Chassis
4530  22 RAID Chassis
4531  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4532  24 Sealed-case PC
4533  25 Multi-system
4534  26 CompactPCI
4535  27 AdvancedTCA
4536  28 Blade
4537  29 Blade Enclosing
4538 </pre>
4539
4540 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4541 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4542 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4543
4544 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4545
4546 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4547 test machine:</p>
4548
4549 <p><blockquote>
4550 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4551 </blockquote></p>
4552
4553 <p>The values present are</p>
4554
4555 <pre>
4556   ty  01  (type)
4557   pr  00  (prototype)
4558   id  00  (id)
4559   ex  00  (extra)
4560 </pre>
4561
4562 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4563 the valid values are.</p>
4564
4565 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4566
4567 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4568 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4569 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4570 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4571 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4572 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4573 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4574
4575 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4576
4577 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4578 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4579
4580 <pre>
4581   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4582     echo "$id" ; \
4583     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4584   done
4585 </pre>
4586
4587 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4588 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4589
4590 <pre>
4591   acpi:ACPI0003:
4592     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4593   acpi:device:
4594   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4595   acpi:IBM0068:
4596     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4597     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4598     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4599     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4600   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4601     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4602     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4603     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4604   [...]
4605 </pre>
4606
4607 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4608 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4609 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4610 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4611
4612 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
4613 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
4614 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
4615
4616       </div>
4617       <div class="tags">
4618
4619
4620         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>.
4621
4622
4623       </div>
4624     </div>
4625     <div class="padding"></div>
4626
4627     <div class="entry">
4628       <div class="title">
4629         <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>
4630       </div>
4631       <div class="date">
4632         10th January 2013
4633       </div>
4634       <div class="body">
4635         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4636 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4637 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4638 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
4639 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4640 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
4641 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4642 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4643 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4644 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
4645 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4646 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4647 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4648 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4649 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4650 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
4651 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
4652 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
4653
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="tags">
4656
4657
4658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4659
4660
4661       </div>
4662     </div>
4663     <div class="padding"></div>
4664
4665     <div class="entry">
4666       <div class="title">
4667         <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>
4668       </div>
4669       <div class="date">
4670          9th January 2013
4671       </div>
4672       <div class="body">
4673         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4674 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4675 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4676 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4677 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4678 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4679 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4680 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4681 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4682 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
4683 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
4684
4685 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
4686 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
4687 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
4688 simple:
4689
4690 <ul>
4691
4692 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4693   starting when a user log in.</li>
4694
4695 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4696   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
4697
4698 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4699   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4700   packages.</li>
4701
4702 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4703   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
4704
4705 </ul>
4706
4707 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
4708 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
4709 discover database to find packages and
4710 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
4711 packages.</p>
4712
4713 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
4714 draft package is now checked into
4715 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4716 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
4717 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
4718 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4719 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4720 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
4721 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
4722 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4723 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
4724 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
4725 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
4726 because of the freeze).</p>
4727
4728 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4729 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4730 inserted):</p>
4731
4732 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
4733
4734 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4735 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
4736 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
4737
4738 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4739 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4740 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
4741 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4742 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4743 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4744 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
4745
4746 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4747 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
4748 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
4749 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4750 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
4751 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
4752 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4753 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
4754 not be installed?</p>
4755
4756 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4757 please send me an email. :)</p>
4758
4759       </div>
4760       <div class="tags">
4761
4762
4763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4764
4765
4766       </div>
4767     </div>
4768     <div class="padding"></div>
4769
4770     <div class="entry">
4771       <div class="title">
4772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
4773       </div>
4774       <div class="date">
4775          2nd January 2013
4776       </div>
4777       <div class="body">
4778         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4779 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
4780 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4781 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4782 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
4783 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4784 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
4785 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4786 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
4787 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
4788
4789 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
4790 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
4791 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
4792
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="tags">
4795
4796
4797         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>.
4798
4799
4800       </div>
4801     </div>
4802     <div class="padding"></div>
4803
4804     <div class="entry">
4805       <div class="title">
4806         <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>
4807       </div>
4808       <div class="date">
4809         25th December 2012
4810       </div>
4811       <div class="body">
4812         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4813 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
4814
4815 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
4816 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4817 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4818 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4819 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
4820 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
4821 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4822 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
4823 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4824 name.</p>
4825
4826 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4827 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4828 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
4829
4830 <blockquote><pre>
4831 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4832 cd bitcoin
4833 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4834 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4835 </pre></blockquote>
4836
4837 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
4838 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4839 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
4840 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
4841 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
4842 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4843 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4844 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4845 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
4846
4847 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4848 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4849 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4850
4851       </div>
4852       <div class="tags">
4853
4854
4855         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>.
4856
4857
4858       </div>
4859     </div>
4860     <div class="padding"></div>
4861
4862     <div class="entry">
4863       <div class="title">
4864         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
4865       </div>
4866       <div class="date">
4867         21st December 2012
4868       </div>
4869       <div class="body">
4870         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
4871 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
4872 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4873 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
4874 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
4875 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
4876 is now maintained by a
4877 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
4878 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
4879 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4880 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4881 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4882 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4883 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
4884 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4885 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4886 Corallo in a
4887 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
4888 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4889 Debian package.</p>
4890
4891 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4892 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4893 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4894 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4895 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4896 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4897 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
4898 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
4899 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4900 new version to unstable.
4901
4902 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4903 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
4904 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4905 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4906 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4907 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4908 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4909 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
4910 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4911 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4912 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
4913 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4914 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4915 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
4916 have not tested them.</p>
4917
4918 <p>My
4919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
4920 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4921 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4922 years ago, as can be
4923 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
4924 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
4925 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4926 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4927 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
4928 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4929 the same address as last time,
4930 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4931
4932       </div>
4933       <div class="tags">
4934
4935
4936         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>.
4937
4938
4939       </div>
4940     </div>
4941     <div class="padding"></div>
4942
4943     <div class="entry">
4944       <div class="title">
4945         <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>
4946       </div>
4947       <div class="date">
4948          7th September 2012
4949       </div>
4950       <div class="body">
4951         <p>As I
4952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
4953 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4954 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4955 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
4956 repository for the project</a>.</p>
4957
4958 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4959 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4960 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4961 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
4962
4963 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4964 PostScript formats at
4965 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
4966 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
4967
4968       </div>
4969       <div class="tags">
4970
4971
4972         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>.
4973
4974
4975       </div>
4976     </div>
4977     <div class="padding"></div>
4978
4979     <div class="entry">
4980       <div class="title">
4981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
4982       </div>
4983       <div class="date">
4984         16th August 2012
4985       </div>
4986       <div class="body">
4987         <p>I dag fyller
4988 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
4989 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4990 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
4991
4992       </div>
4993       <div class="tags">
4994
4995
4996         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
4997
4998
4999       </div>
5000     </div>
5001     <div class="padding"></div>
5002
5003     <div class="entry">
5004       <div class="title">
5005         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5006       </div>
5007       <div class="date">
5008         24th June 2012
5009       </div>
5010       <div class="body">
5011         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5012 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5013 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5014 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5015 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5016 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5017 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5018 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5019 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5020 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5021 missing in my book.</p>
5022
5023 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5024 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5025 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5026 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5027 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5028 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5029 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5030
5031       </div>
5032       <div class="tags">
5033
5034
5035         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>.
5036
5037
5038       </div>
5039     </div>
5040     <div class="padding"></div>
5041
5042     <div class="entry">
5043       <div class="title">
5044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5045       </div>
5046       <div class="date">
5047         21st November 2011
5048       </div>
5049       <div class="body">
5050         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5051 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5052 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5053 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5054 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5055 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5056 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5057 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5058 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5059 the tools to do so.</p>
5060
5061 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5062 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5063 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5064 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5065
5066 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5067 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5068 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5069 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5070 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5071 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5072 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5073 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5074
5075 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5076 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5077 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5078
5079 <p><pre>
5080 #!/usr/bin/perl
5081 use strict;
5082 use warnings;
5083 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5084 BEGIN {
5085     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5086     my %rhelmodules = (
5087         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5088         );
5089     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5090         eval "use $module;";
5091         if ($@) {
5092             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5093             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5094             eval "use $module;";
5095         }
5096     }
5097 }
5098 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5099
5100 upgrade_dell();
5101
5102 exit 0;
5103
5104 sub run_firmware_script {
5105     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5106     unless ($script) {
5107         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5108         exit 1
5109     }
5110     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5111
5112     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5113         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5114     } else {
5115         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5116     }
5117 }
5118
5119 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5120     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5121     # Run firmware packages
5122     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5123         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5124         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5125         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5126             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5127             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5128         }
5129         closedir $dh;
5130     }
5131 }
5132
5133 sub download {
5134     my $url = shift;
5135     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5136     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5137 }
5138
5139 sub upgrade_dell {
5140     my @dirs;
5141     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5142     chomp $product;
5143
5144     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5145
5146         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5147         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5148
5149         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5150             CLEANUP => 1
5151             );
5152         chdir($tmpdir);
5153         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5154         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5155         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5156         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5157         my $fwopts = "-q";
5158         if (@paths) {
5159             for my $url (@paths) {
5160                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5161             }
5162             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5163         } else {
5164             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5165             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5166         }
5167         chdir('/');
5168     } else {
5169         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5170         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5171     }
5172 }
5173
5174 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5175     my $path = shift;
5176     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5177     download($url);
5178 }
5179
5180 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5181 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5182 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5183 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5184     my $filename = shift;
5185
5186     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5187     chomp $product;
5188     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5189
5190     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5191
5192     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5193     my @paths;
5194     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5195         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5196         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5197         my $oscode;
5198         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5199             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5200         } else {
5201             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5202         }
5203         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5204         {
5205             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5206         }
5207     }
5208     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5209         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5210
5211         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5212         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5213
5214         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5215         for my $path (@paths) {
5216             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5217                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5218             }
5219         }
5220     }
5221     return @paths;
5222 }
5223 </pre>
5224
5225 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5226 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5227 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5228 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5229 outdated.</p>
5230
5231       </div>
5232       <div class="tags">
5233
5234
5235         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>.
5236
5237
5238       </div>
5239     </div>
5240     <div class="padding"></div>
5241
5242     <div class="entry">
5243       <div class="title">
5244         <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>
5245       </div>
5246       <div class="date">
5247          4th August 2011
5248       </div>
5249       <div class="body">
5250         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5251 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5252 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5253 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5254 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5255 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5256 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5257 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5258 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
5259
5260 <p><blockquote>
5261 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5262 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5263 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5264 </blockquote></p>
5265
5266 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5267 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5268 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5269 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5270 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5271 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5272 hard to explain.</p>
5273
5274 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5275 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5276 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5277 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5278 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5279 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5280 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5281 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5282 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5283 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5284 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5285 mode).</p>
5286
5287 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5288 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5289 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5290 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5291 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5292 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5293 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5294 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5295 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5296
5297 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5298 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5299 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5300 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5301 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5302 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5303 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5304 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5305
5306 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5307 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5308 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5309
5310       </div>
5311       <div class="tags">
5312
5313
5314         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>.
5315
5316
5317       </div>
5318     </div>
5319     <div class="padding"></div>
5320
5321     <div class="entry">
5322       <div class="title">
5323         <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>
5324       </div>
5325       <div class="date">
5326         30th July 2011
5327       </div>
5328       <div class="body">
5329         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5330 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
5331 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
5332 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
5333 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5334 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5335 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5336 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5337 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5338 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
5339 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5340 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5341 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5342
5343 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
5344 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5345 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
5346 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
5347 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5348 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5349 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5350 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
5351 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5352
5353 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5354 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5355 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5356 is presented.</p>
5357
5358 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
5359 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5360 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5361 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5362 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5363 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5364 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5365 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
5366 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5367 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5368 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5369 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
5370 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5371 find time to push this forward.</p>
5372
5373       </div>
5374       <div class="tags">
5375
5376
5377         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>.
5378
5379
5380       </div>
5381     </div>
5382     <div class="padding"></div>
5383
5384     <div class="entry">
5385       <div class="title">
5386         <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>
5387       </div>
5388       <div class="date">
5389         29th July 2011
5390       </div>
5391       <div class="body">
5392         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5393 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5394 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
5395 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5396 issues.</p>
5397
5398 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
5399 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
5400 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
5401
5402 <ol>
5403
5404 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
5405 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
5406 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
5407 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
5408 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
5409 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
5410 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
5411 Debian.</li>
5412
5413 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
5414 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
5415 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
5416 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
5417 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
5418 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
5419 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
5420 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
5421 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5422 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
5423 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5424 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5425 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
5426
5427 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5428 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
5429 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5430 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
5431 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
5432 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5433 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
5434 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
5435 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5436 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
5437
5438 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
5439 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5440 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5441 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
5442 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
5443 latter behaviour.</li>
5444
5445 </ol>
5446
5447 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5448 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5449 it do not matter much.</p>
5450
5451 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5452 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
5453 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
5454
5455       </div>
5456       <div class="tags">
5457
5458
5459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5460
5461
5462       </div>
5463     </div>
5464     <div class="padding"></div>
5465
5466     <div class="entry">
5467       <div class="title">
5468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
5469       </div>
5470       <div class="date">
5471         26th July 2011
5472       </div>
5473       <div class="body">
5474         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
5475 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5476 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5477 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5478 security support for a few years.</p>
5479
5480 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5481 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
5482 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5483 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
5484 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
5485 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
5486 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5487 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5488 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5489 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5490 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5491 easier in the future.</p>
5492
5493 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5494 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5495 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
5496 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5497 do not have time for.</p>
5498
5499       </div>
5500       <div class="tags">
5501
5502
5503         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>.
5504
5505
5506       </div>
5507     </div>
5508     <div class="padding"></div>
5509
5510     <div class="entry">
5511       <div class="title">
5512         <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>
5513       </div>
5514       <div class="date">
5515          3rd April 2011
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="body">
5518         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
5519 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5520 update in English.</p>
5521
5522 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5523 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5524 of the British service
5525 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
5526 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
5527 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5528 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
5529 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
5530 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
5531 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5532 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5533 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
5534 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
5535 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
5536 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5537 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
5538
5539 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5540 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
5541 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5542 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
5543 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5544 public infrastructure.</p>
5545
5546 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5547 such service?</p>
5548
5549       </div>
5550       <div class="tags">
5551
5552
5553         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>.
5554
5555
5556       </div>
5557     </div>
5558     <div class="padding"></div>
5559
5560     <div class="entry">
5561       <div class="title">
5562         <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>
5563       </div>
5564       <div class="date">
5565         28th January 2011
5566       </div>
5567       <div class="body">
5568         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5569 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
5570 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5571 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5572 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
5573 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
5574 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5575 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5576 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5577 out which security holes were present in our free software
5578 collection.</p>
5579
5580 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5581 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5582 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
5583 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5584 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5585 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
5586 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5587 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
5588 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5589 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
5590 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
5591 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
5592 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
5593 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5594 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
5595 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
5596
5597 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5598 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5599 check out, one could look up
5600 <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
5601 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5602 The most recent one is
5603 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
5604 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5605 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
5606
5607 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5608 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
5609 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5610 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
5611 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5612 security issues out.</p>
5613
5614 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
5615 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
5616 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
5617 RHEL is providing
5618 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
5619 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
5620 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
5621
5622 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
5623 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
5624 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
5625 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
5626 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
5627 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
5628 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
5629 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
5630 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
5631 established soon.</p>
5632
5633 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
5634 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
5635 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
5636 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
5637 for their packages.</p>
5638
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="tags">
5641
5642
5643         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>.
5644
5645
5646       </div>
5647     </div>
5648     <div class="padding"></div>
5649
5650     <div class="entry">
5651       <div class="title">
5652         <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>
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="date">
5655         23rd January 2011
5656       </div>
5657       <div class="body">
5658         <p>In the
5659 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
5660 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
5661 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
5662 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
5663 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
5664 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
5665 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
5666 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
5667 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
5668 one of my machines like this:</p>
5669
5670 <pre>
5671 loaded modules:
5672 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
5673 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
5674 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
5675 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
5676 10de:03ec pata_amd
5677 10de:03f6 sata_nv
5678 1022:1103 k8temp
5679 109e:036e bttv
5680 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
5681 11ab:4364 sky2
5682 </pre>
5683
5684 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
5685 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
5686
5687 <pre>
5688 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
5689     echo loaded pci modules:
5690     (
5691         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
5692         for address in * ; do
5693             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5694                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5695                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5696                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5697                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
5698                     echo "$id $module"
5699                 fi
5700             fi
5701         done
5702     )
5703     echo
5704 fi
5705 </pre>
5706
5707 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
5708 mappings:</p>
5709
5710 <pre>
5711 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
5712     echo loaded usb modules:
5713     (
5714         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
5715         for address in * ; do
5716             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5717                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5718                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5719                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5720                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
5721                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
5722                         echo "$id $module"
5723                     fi
5724                 fi
5725             fi
5726         done
5727     )
5728     echo
5729 fi
5730 </pre>
5731
5732 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5733 well.</p>
5734
5735       </div>
5736       <div class="tags">
5737
5738
5739         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>.
5740
5741
5742       </div>
5743     </div>
5744     <div class="padding"></div>
5745
5746     <div class="entry">
5747       <div class="title">
5748         <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>
5749       </div>
5750       <div class="date">
5751         22nd December 2010
5752       </div>
5753       <div class="body">
5754         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5755 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5756 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5757 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5758 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5759 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5760 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5761 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5762 university.</p>
5763
5764 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5765 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5766 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5767 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5768 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5769 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5770 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5771 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5772
5773 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5774 I perform on a new model.</p>
5775
5776 <ul>
5777
5778 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5779 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5780 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5781
5782 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5783 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5784
5785 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5786 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5787 reported by the program.</li>
5788
5789 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5790 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5791 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5792 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5793 normally test this by playing
5794 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5795 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5796
5797 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5798 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5799
5800 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5801 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5802
5803 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5804 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5805
5806 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5807 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5808 few.</li>
5809
5810 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5811 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5812 notice this.</li>
5813
5814 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5815 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5816 resume.</li>
5817
5818 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5819 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5820 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5821 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5822 not.</li>
5823
5824 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5825 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5826 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5827 existence.</li>
5828
5829 </ul>
5830
5831 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5832 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5833 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5834 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5835 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5836 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5837 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5838 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5839
5840       </div>
5841       <div class="tags">
5842
5843
5844         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>.
5845
5846
5847       </div>
5848     </div>
5849     <div class="padding"></div>
5850
5851     <div class="entry">
5852       <div class="title">
5853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5854       </div>
5855       <div class="date">
5856         11th December 2010
5857       </div>
5858       <div class="body">
5859         <p>As I continue to explore
5860 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5861 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5862 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5863
5864 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5865 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5866 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5867 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5868 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5869 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5870 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5871 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5872 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5873 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5874 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5875 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5876 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5877 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5878 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5879 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5880 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5881 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5882 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5883 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5884
5885 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5886 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5887 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5888 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5889 If the Skolelinux foundation
5890 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5891 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5892 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5893 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
5894 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5895 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5896 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5897 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5898
5899 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5900 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5901 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5902 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5903 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5904 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5905 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5906 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5907 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5908 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5909 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5910 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5911 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5912 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5913 currencies.</p>
5914
5915 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5916 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5917 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5918 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5919 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5920 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5921 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5922 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5923 BitCoins.  Check out
5924 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5925 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5926 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5927 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5928 yet.</p>
5929
5930 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5931 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5932 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5933 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5934 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5935
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="tags">
5938
5939
5940         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>.
5941
5942
5943       </div>
5944     </div>
5945     <div class="padding"></div>
5946
5947     <div class="entry">
5948       <div class="title">
5949         <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>
5950       </div>
5951       <div class="date">
5952         10th December 2010
5953       </div>
5954       <div class="body">
5955         <p>With this weeks lawless
5956 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5957 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5958 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5959 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5960 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5961 A blog post from
5962 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5963 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5964 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5965 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5966 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5967 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5968 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5969
5970 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5971 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5972 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5973 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5974 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5975 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5976 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5977 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5978 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5979 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5980
5981 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5982 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5983 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5984 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5985 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5986 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5987 you can even get
5988 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5989 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5990 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5991 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5992
5993 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5994 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5995 donations to the address
5996 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5997
5998       </div>
5999       <div class="tags">
6000
6001
6002         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>.
6003
6004
6005       </div>
6006     </div>
6007     <div class="padding"></div>
6008
6009     <div class="entry">
6010       <div class="title">
6011         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="date">
6014         27th November 2010
6015       </div>
6016       <div class="body">
6017         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6018 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6019 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6020 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6021 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6022 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6023 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6024 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6025
6026 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6027 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6028 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6029 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6030 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6031 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6032 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6033 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6034 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6035 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6036 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6037
6038 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6039 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6040 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6041 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6042 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6043 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6044 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6045 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6046 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6047 what is going on.</p>
6048
6049       </div>
6050       <div class="tags">
6051
6052
6053         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>.
6054
6055
6056       </div>
6057     </div>
6058     <div class="padding"></div>
6059
6060     <div class="entry">
6061       <div class="title">
6062         <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>
6063       </div>
6064       <div class="date">
6065         22nd November 2010
6066       </div>
6067       <div class="body">
6068         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6069 upgrade testing of the
6070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6071 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6072 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6073 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6074
6075 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6076
6077 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6078
6079 <blockquote><p>
6080   apache2.2-bin
6081   aptdaemon
6082   baobab
6083   binfmt-support
6084   browser-plugin-gnash
6085   cheese-common
6086   cli-common
6087   cups-pk-helper
6088   dmz-cursor-theme
6089   empathy
6090   empathy-common
6091   freedesktop-sound-theme
6092   freeglut3
6093   gconf-defaults-service
6094   gdm-themes
6095   gedit-plugins
6096   geoclue
6097   geoclue-hostip
6098   geoclue-localnet
6099   geoclue-manual
6100   geoclue-yahoo
6101   gnash
6102   gnash-common
6103   gnome
6104   gnome-backgrounds
6105   gnome-cards-data
6106   gnome-codec-install
6107   gnome-core
6108   gnome-desktop-environment
6109   gnome-disk-utility
6110   gnome-screenshot
6111   gnome-search-tool
6112   gnome-session-canberra
6113   gnome-system-log
6114   gnome-themes-extras
6115   gnome-themes-more
6116   gnome-user-share
6117   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6118   gstreamer0.10-tools
6119   gtk2-engines
6120   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6121   gtk2-engines-smooth
6122   hamster-applet
6123   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6124   libapr1
6125   libaprutil1
6126   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6127   libaprutil1-ldap
6128   libart2.0-cil
6129   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6130   libboost-python1.42.0
6131   libboost-thread1.42.0
6132   libchamplain-0.4-0
6133   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6134   libcheese-gtk18
6135   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6136   libcryptui0
6137   libdiscid0
6138   libelf1
6139   libepc-1.0-2
6140   libepc-common
6141   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6142   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6143   libfreerdp0
6144   libgconf2.0-cil
6145   libgdata-common
6146   libgdata7
6147   libgdu-gtk0
6148   libgee2
6149   libgeoclue0
6150   libgexiv2-0
6151   libgif4
6152   libglade2.0-cil
6153   libglib2.0-cil
6154   libgmime2.4-cil
6155   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6156   libgnome2.24-cil
6157   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6158   libgpod-common
6159   libgpod4
6160   libgtk2.0-cil
6161   libgtkglext1
6162   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6163   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6164   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6165   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6166   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6167   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6168   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6169   libmono-security2.0-cil
6170   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6171   libmono-system2.0-cil
6172   libmtp8
6173   libmusicbrainz3-6
6174   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6175   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6176   libopal3.6.8
6177   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6178   libpt2.6.7
6179   libpython2.6
6180   librpm1
6181   librpmio1
6182   libsdl1.2debian
6183   libsrtp0
6184   libssh-4
6185   libtelepathy-farsight0
6186   libtelepathy-glib0
6187   libtidy-0.99-0
6188   media-player-info
6189   mesa-utils
6190   mono-2.0-gac
6191   mono-gac
6192   mono-runtime
6193   nautilus-sendto
6194   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6195   p7zip-full
6196   pkg-config
6197   python-aptdaemon
6198   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6199   python-axiom
6200   python-beautifulsoup
6201   python-bugbuddy
6202   python-clientform
6203   python-coherence
6204   python-configobj
6205   python-crypto
6206   python-cupshelpers
6207   python-elementtree
6208   python-epsilon
6209   python-evolution
6210   python-feedparser
6211   python-gdata
6212   python-gdbm
6213   python-gst0.10
6214   python-gtkglext1
6215   python-gtksourceview2
6216   python-httplib2
6217   python-louie
6218   python-mako
6219   python-markupsafe
6220   python-mechanize
6221   python-nevow
6222   python-notify
6223   python-opengl
6224   python-openssl
6225   python-pam
6226   python-pkg-resources
6227   python-pyasn1
6228   python-pysqlite2
6229   python-rdflib
6230   python-serial
6231   python-tagpy
6232   python-twisted-bin
6233   python-twisted-conch
6234   python-twisted-core
6235   python-twisted-web
6236   python-utidylib
6237   python-webkit
6238   python-xdg
6239   python-zope.interface
6240   remmina
6241   remmina-plugin-data
6242   remmina-plugin-rdp
6243   remmina-plugin-vnc
6244   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6245   rhythmbox-plugins
6246   rpm-common
6247   rpm2cpio
6248   seahorse-plugins
6249   shotwell
6250   software-center
6251   system-config-printer-udev
6252   telepathy-gabble
6253   telepathy-mission-control-5
6254   telepathy-salut
6255   tomboy
6256   totem
6257   totem-coherence
6258   totem-mozilla
6259   totem-plugins
6260   transmission-common
6261   xdg-user-dirs
6262   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6263   xserver-xephyr
6264 </p></blockquote>
6265
6266 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6267
6268 <blockquote><p>
6269   cheese
6270   ekiga
6271   eog
6272   epiphany-extensions
6273   evolution-exchange
6274   fast-user-switch-applet
6275   file-roller
6276   gcalctool
6277   gconf-editor
6278   gdm
6279   gedit
6280   gedit-common
6281   gnome-games
6282   gnome-games-data
6283   gnome-nettool
6284   gnome-system-tools
6285   gnome-themes
6286   gnuchess
6287   gucharmap
6288   guile-1.8-libs
6289   libavahi-ui0
6290   libdmx1
6291   libgalago3
6292   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6293   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6294   liblircclient0
6295   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6296   libspeexdsp1
6297   libsvga1
6298   rhythmbox
6299   seahorse
6300   sound-juicer
6301   system-config-printer
6302   totem-common
6303   transmission-gtk
6304   vinagre
6305   vino
6306 </p></blockquote>
6307
6308 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6309
6310 <blockquote><p>
6311   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6312 </p></blockquote>
6313
6314 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6315
6316 <blockquote><p>
6317 [nothing]
6318 </p></blockquote>
6319
6320 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6321
6322 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6323
6324 <blockquote><p>
6325   ksmserver
6326 </p></blockquote>
6327
6328 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6329
6330 <blockquote><p>
6331   kwin
6332   network-manager-kde
6333 </p></blockquote>
6334
6335 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6336
6337 <blockquote><p>
6338   arts
6339   dolphin
6340   freespacenotifier
6341   google-gadgets-gst
6342   google-gadgets-xul
6343   kappfinder
6344   kcalc
6345   kcharselect
6346   kde-core
6347   kde-plasma-desktop
6348   kde-standard
6349   kde-window-manager
6350   kdeartwork
6351   kdeartwork-emoticons
6352   kdeartwork-style
6353   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6354   kdebase
6355   kdebase-apps
6356   kdebase-workspace
6357   kdebase-workspace-bin
6358   kdebase-workspace-data
6359   kdeeject
6360   kdelibs
6361   kdeplasma-addons
6362   kdeutils
6363   kdewallpapers
6364   kdf
6365   kfloppy
6366   kgpg
6367   khelpcenter4
6368   kinfocenter
6369   konq-plugins-l10n
6370   konqueror-nsplugins
6371   kscreensaver
6372   kscreensaver-xsavers
6373   ktimer
6374   kwrite
6375   libgle3
6376   libkde4-ruby1.8
6377   libkonq5
6378   libkonq5-templates
6379   libnetpbm10
6380   libplasma-ruby
6381   libplasma-ruby1.8
6382   libqt4-ruby1.8
6383   marble-data
6384   marble-plugins
6385   netpbm
6386   nuvola-icon-theme
6387   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6388   plasma-desktop
6389   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6390   plasma-runners-addons
6391   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6392   plasma-scriptengine-python
6393   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6394   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6395   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6396   plasma-scriptengines
6397   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6398   plasma-widget-folderview
6399   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6400   ruby
6401   sweeper
6402   update-notifier-kde
6403   xscreensaver-data-extra
6404   xscreensaver-gl
6405   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6406   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6407 </p></blockquote>
6408
6409 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6410
6411 <blockquote><p>
6412   ark
6413   google-gadgets-common
6414   google-gadgets-qt
6415   htdig
6416   kate
6417   kdebase-bin
6418   kdebase-data
6419   kdepasswd
6420   kfind
6421   klipper
6422   konq-plugins
6423   konqueror
6424   ksysguard
6425   ksysguardd
6426   libarchive1
6427   libcln6
6428   libeet1
6429   libeina-svn-06
6430   libggadget-1.0-0b
6431   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6432   libgps19
6433   libkdecorations4
6434   libkephal4
6435   libkonq4
6436   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6437   libkscreensaver5
6438   libksgrd4
6439   libksignalplotter4
6440   libkunitconversion4
6441   libkwineffects1a
6442   libmarblewidget4
6443   libntrack-qt4-1
6444   libntrack0
6445   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6446   libplasmaclock4a
6447   libplasmagenericshell4
6448   libprocesscore4a
6449   libprocessui4a
6450   libqalculate5
6451   libqedje0a
6452   libqtruby4shared2
6453   libqzion0a
6454   libruby1.8
6455   libscim8c2a
6456   libsmokekdecore4-3
6457   libsmokekdeui4-3
6458   libsmokekfile3
6459   libsmokekhtml3
6460   libsmokekio3
6461   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6462   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6463   libsmokekparts3
6464   libsmokektexteditor3
6465   libsmokekutils3
6466   libsmokenepomuk3
6467   libsmokephonon3
6468   libsmokeplasma3
6469   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6470   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6471   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6472   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6473   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6474   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6475   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6476   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6477   libsmokeqttest4-3
6478   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6479   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6480   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6481   libsmokesolid3
6482   libsmokesoprano3
6483   libtaskmanager4a
6484   libtidy-0.99-0
6485   libweather-ion4a
6486   libxklavier16
6487   libxxf86misc1
6488   okteta
6489   oxygencursors
6490   plasma-dataengines-addons
6491   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6492   plasma-widget-lancelot
6493   plasma-widgets-addons
6494   plasma-widgets-workspace
6495   polkit-kde-1
6496   ruby1.8
6497   systemsettings
6498   update-notifier-common
6499 </p></blockquote>
6500
6501 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6502 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6503 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6504 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6505
6506       </div>
6507       <div class="tags">
6508
6509
6510         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>.
6511
6512
6513       </div>
6514     </div>
6515     <div class="padding"></div>
6516
6517     <div class="entry">
6518       <div class="title">
6519         <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>
6520       </div>
6521       <div class="date">
6522         22nd November 2010
6523       </div>
6524       <div class="body">
6525         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6526 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6527 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6528 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6529 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6530 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6531 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6532 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6533 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6534
6535 <p>I found
6536 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6537 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6538 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6539 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6540 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6541 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6542
6543 <pre>
6544 #!/bin/sh
6545
6546 # Based on
6547 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6548
6549 set -e
6550 set -x
6551
6552 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6553     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6554     exit 1
6555 else
6556     host="$1"
6557 fi
6558
6559 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6560     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6561     exit 1
6562 fi
6563
6564 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6565 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6566 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6567 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6568
6569 img=$host.img
6570 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6571 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6572
6573 parted $img mklabel msdos
6574 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6575 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6576 parted $img set 1 boot on
6577
6578 modprobe dm-mod
6579 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6580 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6581
6582 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6583 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6584 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6585
6586 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6587 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6588 </pre>
6589
6590 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6591 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6592
6593 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6594 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6595 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6596 seem to work just fine.</p>
6597
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="tags">
6600
6601
6602         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>.
6603
6604
6605       </div>
6606     </div>
6607     <div class="padding"></div>
6608
6609     <div class="entry">
6610       <div class="title">
6611         <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>
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="date">
6614         20th November 2010
6615       </div>
6616       <div class="body">
6617         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6618 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6619 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6620 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6621
6622 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6623 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6624 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6625
6626 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6627
6628 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6629
6630 <blockquote><p>
6631   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6632   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6633   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6634   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6635   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6636   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6637   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6638   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6639   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6640   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6641   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6642   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6643   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6644   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6645   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6646   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6647   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6648   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6649   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6650   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6651   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6652   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6653   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6654   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6655   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6656   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6657   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6658   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6659   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6660   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6661   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6662   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6663   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6664   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6665   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6666   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6667   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6668   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6669   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6670   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6671   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6672   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6673   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6674   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6675   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6676   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6677   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6678   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6679   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6680   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6681   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6682   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6683   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6684   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6685   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6686   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6687   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6688   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6689   zip
6690 </p></blockquote>
6691
6692 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6693
6694 <blockquote><p>
6695   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6696   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6697   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6698   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6699   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6700   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6701   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6702   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6703   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6704   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6705   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6706   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6707   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6708   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6709   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6710   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6711   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6712   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6713   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6714   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6715   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6716   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6717   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6718   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6719   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6720   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6721   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6722   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6723   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6724 </p></blockquote>
6725
6726 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6727
6728 <blockquote><p>
6729   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6730 </p></blockquote>
6731
6732 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6733
6734 <blockquote><p>
6735 [nothing]
6736 </p></blockquote>
6737
6738 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6739
6740 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6741
6742 <blockquote><p>
6743   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6744   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6745   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6746   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6747   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6748   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6749   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6750   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6751   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6752   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6753   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6754   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6755   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6756   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6757   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6758   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6759   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6760   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6761   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6762   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6763   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6764   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6765   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6766   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6767   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6768   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6769   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6770   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6771   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6772   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6773 </p></blockquote>
6774
6775 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6776
6777 <blockquote><p>
6778   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6779   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6780   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6781   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6782   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6783   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6784   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6785   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6786   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6787   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6788   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6789   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6790   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6791   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6792   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6793   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6794   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6795   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6796   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6797   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6798   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6799   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6800   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6801   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6802   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6803   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6804   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6805   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6806   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6807   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6808   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6809   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6810   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6811 </p></blockquote>
6812
6813 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6814
6815 <blockquote><p>
6816   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6817   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6818   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6819   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6820   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6821   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6822   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6823 </p></blockquote>
6824
6825 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6826
6827 <blockquote><p>
6828   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6829 </p></blockquote>
6830
6831       </div>
6832       <div class="tags">
6833
6834
6835         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>.
6836
6837
6838       </div>
6839     </div>
6840     <div class="padding"></div>
6841
6842     <div class="entry">
6843       <div class="title">
6844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
6845       </div>
6846       <div class="date">
6847         20th November 2010
6848       </div>
6849       <div class="body">
6850         <p>Answering
6851 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6852 call from the Gnash project</a> for
6853 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
6854 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6855 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6856 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6857 releases out more often.</p>
6858
6859 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6860 I have considered setting up a <a
6861 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
6862 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6863 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6864 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
6865 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6866 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6867 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6868 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
6869 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6870 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6871 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
6872 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
6873
6874       </div>
6875       <div class="tags">
6876
6877
6878         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>.
6879
6880
6881       </div>
6882     </div>
6883     <div class="padding"></div>
6884
6885     <div class="entry">
6886       <div class="title">
6887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
6888       </div>
6889       <div class="date">
6890          9th November 2010
6891       </div>
6892       <div class="body">
6893         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6894
6895 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
6896 3D linked in from
6897 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6898 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
6899
6900       </div>
6901       <div class="tags">
6902
6903
6904         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>.
6905
6906
6907       </div>
6908     </div>
6909     <div class="padding"></div>
6910
6911     <div class="entry">
6912       <div class="title">
6913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
6914       </div>
6915       <div class="date">
6916         24th October 2010
6917       </div>
6918       <div class="body">
6919         <p>Some updates.</p>
6920
6921 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
6922 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
6923 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
6924 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6925 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
6926 :)</p>
6927
6928 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6929 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6930 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6931 It is called
6932 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
6933 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
6934 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6935 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6936 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6937 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
6938
6939 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
6940 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6941 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
6942 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6943 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
6944 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6945 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6946 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
6947 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6948 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
6949
6950       </div>
6951       <div class="tags">
6952
6953
6954         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>.
6955
6956
6957       </div>
6958     </div>
6959     <div class="padding"></div>
6960
6961     <div class="entry">
6962       <div class="title">
6963         <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>
6964       </div>
6965       <div class="date">
6966          4th September 2010
6967       </div>
6968       <div class="body">
6969         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6970 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6971 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
6972 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
6973 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
6974 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6975 installed.</p>
6976
6977 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
6978 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
6979 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6980 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
6981 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6982 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
6983 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6984 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6985 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
6986
6987 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6988 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6989 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
6990 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6991 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6992 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6993 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6994 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6995 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6996 pages they want to visit.</p>
6997
6998 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
6999 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7000 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7001 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7002 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7003 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7004 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7005 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7006 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7007 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7008 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7009
7010       </div>
7011       <div class="tags">
7012
7013
7014         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>.
7015
7016
7017       </div>
7018     </div>
7019     <div class="padding"></div>
7020
7021     <div class="entry">
7022       <div class="title">
7023         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7024       </div>
7025       <div class="date">
7026         27th July 2010
7027       </div>
7028       <div class="body">
7029         <p>I discovered this while doing
7030 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7031 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7032 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7033 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7034 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7035
7036 <p>An example is from todays
7037 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7038 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7039 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7040 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7041 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7042 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7043 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7044
7045 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7046
7047 <blockquote><pre>
7048 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7049  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7050   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7051 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7052  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7053 </pre></blockquote>
7054
7055 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7056 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7057 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7058 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7059 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7060 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7061 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7062 of dependency loops.</p>
7063
7064 <p>Thanks to
7065 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7066 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7067 dependencies
7068 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7069 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7070
7071 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7072 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7073 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7074 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7075 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7076 it.</p>
7077
7078       </div>
7079       <div class="tags">
7080
7081
7082         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>.
7083
7084
7085       </div>
7086     </div>
7087     <div class="padding"></div>
7088
7089     <div class="entry">
7090       <div class="title">
7091         <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>
7092       </div>
7093       <div class="date">
7094         17th July 2010
7095       </div>
7096       <div class="body">
7097         <p>This is a
7098 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7099 on my
7100 <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
7101 work</a> on
7102 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7103 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7104
7105 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7106 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7107 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7108 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7109
7110 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7111 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7112 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7113
7114 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7115
7116 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7117 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7118 the web.
7119
7120 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7121 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7122 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7123 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7124 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7125 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7126
7127 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7128 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7129 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7130 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7131 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7132 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7133 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7134 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7135 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7136 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7137 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7138 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7139 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7140 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7141 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7142 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7143
7144 <blockquote><pre>
7145 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7146   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7147   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7148   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7149   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7150   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7151   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7152
7153 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7154   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7155   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7156   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7157   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7158   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7159 </pre></blockquote>
7160
7161 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7162 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7163 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7164 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7165 also exist.</p>
7166
7167 <blockquote><pre>
7168 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7169 objectclass: top
7170 objectclass: dnsdomain
7171 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7172 dc: tjener
7173 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7174 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7175
7176 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7177 objectclass: top
7178 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7179 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7180 dc: 2
7181 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7182 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7183 </pre></blockquote>
7184
7185 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7186 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7187 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7188 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7189 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7190 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7191 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7192 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7193 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7194 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7195 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7196 instead.</p>
7197
7198 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7199 like this:</p>
7200
7201 <blockquote><pre>
7202 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7203   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7204   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7205   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7206   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7207   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7208
7209 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7210   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7211 </pre></blockquote>
7212
7213 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7214 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7215 reverse lookups.</p>
7216
7217 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7218 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7219 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7220 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7221
7222 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7223 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7224 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7225
7226 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7227 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7228 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7229 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7230 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7231
7232 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7233 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7234 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7235 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7236 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7237
7238 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7239 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7240 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7241 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7242 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7243 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7244
7245 <blockquote><pre>
7246 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7247     SUP top
7248     AUXILIARY
7249     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7250           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
7251           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
7252           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
7253           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
7254     ))
7255 </pre></blockquote>
7256
7257 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
7258 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
7259 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
7260 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
7261 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
7262 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
7263
7264 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
7265
7266 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
7267 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
7268 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
7269 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
7270 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
7271
7272 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7273 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7274 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7275 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7276
7277 <blockquote><pre>
7278 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7279 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7280 </pre></blockquote>
7281
7282 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7283 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7284 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7285 search result is this entry:</p>
7286
7287 <blockquote><pre>
7288 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7289 cn: dhcp
7290 objectClass: top
7291 objectClass: dhcpServer
7292 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7293 </pre></blockquote>
7294
7295 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7296 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7297 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7298 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7299 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7300 The search result is this entry:</p>
7301
7302 <blockquote><pre>
7303 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7304 cn: DHCP Config
7305 objectClass: top
7306 objectClass: dhcpService
7307 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7308 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7309 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7310 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7311 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7312 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7313 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7314 </pre></blockquote>
7315
7316 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
7317 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
7318 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
7319 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
7320 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
7321 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
7322 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
7323 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
7324 related computer objects.</p>
7325
7326 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
7327 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
7328 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
7329 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
7330 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
7331 like:</p>
7332
7333 <blockquote><pre>
7334 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7335 cn: hostname
7336 objectClass: top
7337 objectClass: dhcpHost
7338 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7339 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
7340 </pre></blockquote>
7341
7342 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
7343 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
7344 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
7345 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
7346 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
7347 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
7348 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
7349 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
7350 structural object class.
7351
7352 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7353
7354 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
7355 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
7356 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
7357 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
7358 in the configuration.</p>
7359
7360 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
7361 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
7362 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
7363 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
7364 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
7365 structure.</p>
7366
7367 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
7368 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
7369
7370 <blockquote><pre>
7371 ou=services
7372   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
7373     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
7374     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7375       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7376         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7377     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7378       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7379         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7380     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
7381       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
7382 </pre></blockquote>
7383
7384 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
7385 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
7386 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
7387 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
7388
7389 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
7390 like this:</p>
7391
7392 <blockquote><pre>
7393 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7394 dc: hostname
7395 objectClass: top
7396 objectClass: dhcpHost
7397 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7398 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
7399 associateddomain: hostname.intern
7400 arecord: 10.11.12.13
7401 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7402 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
7403 </pre></blockquote>
7404
7405 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
7406 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
7407 auxiliary object class.</p>
7408
7409       </div>
7410       <div class="tags">
7411
7412
7413         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>.
7414
7415
7416       </div>
7417     </div>
7418     <div class="padding"></div>
7419
7420     <div class="entry">
7421       <div class="title">
7422         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
7423       </div>
7424       <div class="date">
7425         14th July 2010
7426       </div>
7427       <div class="body">
7428         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
7429 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
7430 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
7431 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
7432 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
7433
7434 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
7435 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
7436
7437 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
7438 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
7439 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
7440 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
7441 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
7442 to a slave DNS server.</p>
7443
7444 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
7445 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
7446 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
7447 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
7448 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
7449 seem to work.</p>
7450
7451 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
7452 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
7453 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
7454 this:</p>
7455
7456 <blockquote><pre>
7457   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7458   cn: hostname
7459   objectClass: dhcphost
7460   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7461   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
7462   associateddomain: hostname.intern
7463   arecord: 10.11.12.13
7464   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7465   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
7466   ldapconfigsound: Y
7467 </pre></blockquote>
7468
7469 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
7470 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
7471 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
7472 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
7473
7474 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
7475 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
7476 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
7477 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
7478 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
7479 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
7480 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
7481 might be a good place to put it.</p>
7482
7483 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7484 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7485
7486       </div>
7487       <div class="tags">
7488
7489
7490         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>.
7491
7492
7493       </div>
7494     </div>
7495     <div class="padding"></div>
7496
7497     <div class="entry">
7498       <div class="title">
7499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
7500       </div>
7501       <div class="date">
7502         11th July 2010
7503       </div>
7504       <div class="body">
7505         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
7506 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
7507 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
7508 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
7509
7510 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
7511 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
7512 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
7513 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
7514 LTSP clients.</p>
7515
7516 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
7517 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
7518 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
7519
7520 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
7521 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
7522 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
7523
7524 <blockquote><pre>
7525 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
7526 #
7527 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
7528 #
7529 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
7530 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
7531 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
7532 #
7533 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
7534 # existence of attribute names.
7535 #
7536 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
7537 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
7538 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
7539 #
7540 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
7541 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
7542 #
7543 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
7544 #     SUP top
7545 #     AUXILIARY
7546 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
7547
7548 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
7549 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
7550     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
7551     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
7552         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
7553         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
7554             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
7555             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
7556             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
7557             # bass value on to clients
7558             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
7559         done
7560     done
7561 fi
7562 </pre></blockquote>
7563
7564 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
7565 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
7566 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
7567 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
7568 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
7569
7570 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7571 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7572
7573 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
7574 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
7575 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
7576 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
7577 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
7578 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
7579
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="tags">
7582
7583
7584         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>.
7585
7586
7587       </div>
7588     </div>
7589     <div class="padding"></div>
7590
7591     <div class="entry">
7592       <div class="title">
7593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7594       </div>
7595       <div class="date">
7596          9th July 2010
7597       </div>
7598       <div class="body">
7599         <p>Since
7600 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
7601 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
7602 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
7603 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
7604 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
7605 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
7606 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
7607 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
7608 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
7609 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
7610 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
7611 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
7612 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
7613
7614       </div>
7615       <div class="tags">
7616
7617
7618         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>.
7619
7620
7621       </div>
7622     </div>
7623     <div class="padding"></div>
7624
7625     <div class="entry">
7626       <div class="title">
7627         <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>
7628       </div>
7629       <div class="date">
7630          3rd July 2010
7631       </div>
7632       <div class="body">
7633         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
7634 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
7635 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
7636 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
7637 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
7638 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
7639 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
7640 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
7641
7642 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
7643 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
7644 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
7645 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
7646 publish the difference.</p>
7647
7648 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7649
7650 <blockquote><p>
7651   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7652   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
7653   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
7654   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7655   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
7656   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7657   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
7658   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
7659 </p></blockquote>
7660
7661 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7662
7663 <blockquote><p>
7664   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
7665   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
7666   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
7667   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
7668   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
7669   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
7670   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7671   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7672   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7673   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7674   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
7675   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
7676   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
7677   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
7678   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
7679   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7680   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
7681   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
7682   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
7683   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
7684 </p></blockquote>
7685
7686 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7687
7688 <blockquote><p>
7689   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
7690   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
7691   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7692   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7693   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
7694   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
7695   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
7696   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7697   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7698   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7699   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7700   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
7701   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
7702   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
7703   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
7704   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
7705   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
7706   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
7707   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
7708   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
7709   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
7710 </p></blockquote>
7711
7712 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7713
7714 <blockquote><p>
7715   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
7716   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
7717   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
7718 </p></blockquote>
7719
7720 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
7721 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
7722 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
7723 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
7724 the difference somewhat.
7725
7726       </div>
7727       <div class="tags">
7728
7729
7730         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>.
7731
7732
7733       </div>
7734     </div>
7735     <div class="padding"></div>
7736
7737     <div class="entry">
7738       <div class="title">
7739         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7740       </div>
7741       <div class="date">
7742         28th June 2010
7743       </div>
7744       <div class="body">
7745         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
7746 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
7747 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
7748 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
7749 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
7750 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
7751 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
7752 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
7753 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
7754 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
7755
7756 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
7757 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
7758 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
7759 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
7760 released.</p>
7761
7762 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
7763 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
7764 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
7765 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
7766
7767 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
7768 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7769
7770 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
7771 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
7772 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
7773 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
7774 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
7775
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="tags">
7778
7779
7780         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>.
7781
7782
7783       </div>
7784     </div>
7785     <div class="padding"></div>
7786
7787     <div class="entry">
7788       <div class="title">
7789         <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>
7790       </div>
7791       <div class="date">
7792         24th June 2010
7793       </div>
7794       <div class="body">
7795         <p>A while back, I
7796 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
7797 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
7798 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
7799 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
7800
7801 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
7802 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
7803 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
7804 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
7805
7806 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
7807 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
7808 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
7809 Debian Edu.</p>
7810
7811 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
7812 the
7813 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
7814 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
7815 available today from IETF.</p>
7816
7817 <pre>
7818 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
7819 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
7820 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
7821  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
7822         NAME 'dhcpHost'
7823         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
7824 -       SUP top
7825 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
7826         MUST cn
7827         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
7828         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
7829 </pre>
7830
7831 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
7832 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
7833 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
7834
7835 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7836 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7837
7838       </div>
7839       <div class="tags">
7840
7841
7842         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>.
7843
7844
7845       </div>
7846     </div>
7847     <div class="padding"></div>
7848
7849     <div class="entry">
7850       <div class="title">
7851         <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>
7852       </div>
7853       <div class="date">
7854         16th June 2010
7855       </div>
7856       <div class="body">
7857         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
7858 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
7859 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
7860 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
7861 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
7862 this:
7863
7864 <blockquote><pre>
7865 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7866 tasksel --new-install
7867 </pre></blockquote>
7868
7869 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
7870 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
7871 any output what so ever.
7872
7873 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
7874 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
7875 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
7876 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
7877 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
7878 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
7879 code like this:
7880
7881 <blockquote><pre>
7882 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7883 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
7884 $cmd
7885 </pre></blockquote>
7886
7887 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
7888 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
7889 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
7890 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
7891 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
7892 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
7893 installation.</p>
7894
7895 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
7896 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
7897 like this.</p>
7898
7899       </div>
7900       <div class="tags">
7901
7902
7903         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>.
7904
7905
7906       </div>
7907     </div>
7908     <div class="padding"></div>
7909
7910     <div class="entry">
7911       <div class="title">
7912         <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>
7913       </div>
7914       <div class="date">
7915         13th June 2010
7916       </div>
7917       <div class="body">
7918         <p>My
7919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
7920 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
7921 finally made the upgrade logs available from
7922 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
7923 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
7924 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
7925 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
7926
7927 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
7928 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
7929 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
7930 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
7931 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
7932 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
7933 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
7934 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
7935
7936 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7937 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7938 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7939 too surprising.</p>
7940
7941 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7942 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
7943 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
7944 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7945 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7946 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
7947 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
7948 continue.</p>
7949
7950 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
7951 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7952   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7953   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7954   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7955   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7956   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7957   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7958   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7959   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7960   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7961   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7962   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7963   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7964   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7965   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7966   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7967   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7968   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7969   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7970   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7971   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7972   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7973   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7974   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7975   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7976   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7977   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7978   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7979   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
7980
7981 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
7982
7983 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7984   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7985   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7986   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7987   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7988   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7989   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7990   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7991   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7992   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7993   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7994   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7995   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7996   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7997   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7998   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
7999   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8000   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8001   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8002   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8003   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8004   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8005   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8006   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8007   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8008   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8009   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8010   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8011   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8012   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8013   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8014   zip</p>
8015
8016 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8017
8018 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8019   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8020   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8021   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8022   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8023   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8024   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8025   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8026   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8027   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8028   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8029   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8030   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8031   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8032   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8033   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8034   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8035   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8036   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8037   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8038   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8039   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8040   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8041   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8042   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8043   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8044   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8045   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8046
8047 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8048 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8049   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8050   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8051   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8052   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8053   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8054   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8055   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8056   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8057   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8058   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8059   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8060   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8061   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8062   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8063   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8064   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8065   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8066   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8067   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8068   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8069   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8070   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8071   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8072   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8073   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8074   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8075   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8076   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8077   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8078   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8079   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8080   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8081   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8082   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8083   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8084   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8085
8086
8087       </div>
8088       <div class="tags">
8089
8090
8091         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>.
8092
8093
8094       </div>
8095     </div>
8096     <div class="padding"></div>
8097
8098     <div class="entry">
8099       <div class="title">
8100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8101       </div>
8102       <div class="date">
8103         11th June 2010
8104       </div>
8105       <div class="body">
8106         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8107 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8108 have been discovered and reported in the process
8109 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8110 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8111 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8112 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8113 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8114
8115 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8116 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8117 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8118 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8119 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8120 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8121
8122 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8123 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8124 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8125 is created.  The bug report
8126 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8127 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8128 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8129 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8130 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8131 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8132 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8133 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8134 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8135 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8136 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8137 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8138 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8139
8140 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8141 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8142 trick:</p>
8143
8144 <blockquote><pre>
8145 #!/bin/sh
8146 set -ex
8147
8148 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8149     desktop=$1
8150 else
8151     desktop=gnome
8152 fi
8153
8154 from=lenny
8155 to=squeeze
8156
8157 exec &lt; /dev/null
8158 unset LANG
8159 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8160 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8161 fuser -mv .
8162 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8163 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8164 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8165 #!/bin/sh
8166 exit 101
8167 EOF
8168 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8169 exit_cleanup() {
8170     umount $tmpdir/proc
8171 }
8172 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8173 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8174 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8175
8176 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8177
8178 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8179 # to return the correct answers.
8180 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8181     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8182
8183 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8184 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8185     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8186 #!/bin/sh
8187 exit 2
8188 EOF
8189     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8190 done
8191
8192 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8193 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8194 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8195 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8196
8197 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8198 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8199 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8200 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8201 fuser -mv
8202 </pre></blockquote>
8203
8204 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8205 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8206 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8207 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8208 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8209 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8210
8211 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8212 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8213 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8214 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8215 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8216 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8217 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8218
8219 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8220 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8221 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8222 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8223 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8224 packages.</p>
8225
8226       </div>
8227       <div class="tags">
8228
8229
8230         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>.
8231
8232
8233       </div>
8234     </div>
8235     <div class="padding"></div>
8236
8237     <div class="entry">
8238       <div class="title">
8239         <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>
8240       </div>
8241       <div class="date">
8242          6th June 2010
8243       </div>
8244       <div class="body">
8245         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8246 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8247 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8248 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8249 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8250 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
8251 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
8252
8253 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
8254 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
8255 COLUMNS):</p>
8256
8257 <blockquote><pre>
8258 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
8259 previous=N
8260 PREVLEVEL=
8261 RUNLEVEL=
8262 runlevel=S
8263 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
8264 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
8265 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
8266 </pre></blockquote>
8267
8268 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
8269 script.</p>
8270
8271 <blockquote><pre>
8272 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8273 previous=N
8274 PREVLEVEL=N
8275 RUNLEVEL=S
8276 runlevel=S
8277 </pre></blockquote>
8278
8279 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8280 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8281 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8282
8283 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8284 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8285 choice.</p>
8286
8287       </div>
8288       <div class="tags">
8289
8290
8291         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>.
8292
8293
8294       </div>
8295     </div>
8296     <div class="padding"></div>
8297
8298     <div class="entry">
8299       <div class="title">
8300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8301       </div>
8302       <div class="date">
8303          6th June 2010
8304       </div>
8305       <div class="body">
8306         <p>Via the
8307 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8308 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8309 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8310 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8311 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8312
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="tags">
8315
8316
8317         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>.
8318
8319
8320       </div>
8321     </div>
8322     <div class="padding"></div>
8323
8324     <div class="entry">
8325       <div class="title">
8326         <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>
8327       </div>
8328       <div class="date">
8329          3rd June 2010
8330       </div>
8331       <div class="body">
8332         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
8333 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
8334 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
8335 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
8336 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
8337
8338 <blockquote><pre>
8339 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
8340   vendor                    count
8341   Dell Computer Corporation     1
8342     PowerEdge 1750              1
8343   IBM                           1
8344     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
8345   Intel                         2
8346   [no-dmi-info]                 3
8347 maintainer:~#
8348 </pre></blockquote>
8349
8350 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
8351 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
8352 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
8353 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
8354 option to list the individual machines.</p>
8355
8356 <p>A larger list is
8357 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
8358 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
8359 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
8360 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
8361 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
8362 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
8363 collector.</p>
8364
8365       </div>
8366       <div class="tags">
8367
8368
8369         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>.
8370
8371
8372       </div>
8373     </div>
8374     <div class="padding"></div>
8375
8376     <div class="entry">
8377       <div class="title">
8378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
8379       </div>
8380       <div class="date">
8381          1st June 2010
8382       </div>
8383       <div class="body">
8384         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
8385 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
8386 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
8387 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
8388 wait.</p>
8389
8390 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
8391 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
8392 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
8393 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
8394 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
8395 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
8396
8397 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
8398 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
8399 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
8400 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
8401 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
8402 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
8403 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
8404 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
8405
8406 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
8407
8408       </div>
8409       <div class="tags">
8410
8411
8412         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>.
8413
8414
8415       </div>
8416     </div>
8417     <div class="padding"></div>
8418
8419     <div class="entry">
8420       <div class="title">
8421         <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>
8422       </div>
8423       <div class="date">
8424         27th May 2010
8425       </div>
8426       <div class="body">
8427         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
8428 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
8429 issues are known and should be solved:
8430
8431 <p><ul>
8432
8433 <li>The wicd package seen to
8434 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
8435 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
8436 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
8437 seem to be on the case.</li>
8438
8439 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
8440 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
8441 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
8442 maintainer is on the case.</li>
8443
8444 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
8445 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
8446 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
8447 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
8448 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
8449 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
8450 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
8451 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
8452
8453 </ul></p>
8454
8455 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
8456 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
8457 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
8458 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
8459
8460 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8461 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8462 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8463 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8464
8465 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
8466
8467       </div>
8468       <div class="tags">
8469
8470
8471         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>.
8472
8473
8474       </div>
8475     </div>
8476     <div class="padding"></div>
8477
8478     <div class="entry">
8479       <div class="title">
8480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
8481       </div>
8482       <div class="date">
8483         22nd May 2010
8484       </div>
8485       <div class="body">
8486         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
8487 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
8488 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
8489 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
8490
8491 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
8492 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
8493 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
8494 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
8495 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
8496 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
8497 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
8498 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
8499 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
8500 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
8501 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
8502 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
8503 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
8504 going to work.</p>
8505
8506 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
8507 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
8508 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
8509 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
8510 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
8511 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
8512 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
8513 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
8514 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
8515 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
8516 Edu.</p>
8517
8518 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
8519 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
8520 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
8521 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
8522 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
8523 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
8524
8525 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
8526 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
8527
8528       </div>
8529       <div class="tags">
8530
8531
8532         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>.
8533
8534
8535       </div>
8536     </div>
8537     <div class="padding"></div>
8538
8539     <div class="entry">
8540       <div class="title">
8541         <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>
8542       </div>
8543       <div class="date">
8544         14th May 2010
8545       </div>
8546       <div class="body">
8547         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
8548 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
8549 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
8550 expected, if I am to believe the
8551 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8552 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
8553 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
8554 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
8555 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
8556 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
8557 version.</p>
8558
8559 More information about
8560 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8561 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
8562 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
8563 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8564
8565 <blockquote><pre>
8566 CONCURRENCY=none
8567 </pre></blockquote>
8568
8569 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8570 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8571 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8572 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8573
8574       </div>
8575       <div class="tags">
8576
8577
8578         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>.
8579
8580
8581       </div>
8582     </div>
8583     <div class="padding"></div>
8584
8585     <div class="entry">
8586       <div class="title">
8587         <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>
8588       </div>
8589       <div class="date">
8590         14th May 2010
8591       </div>
8592       <div class="body">
8593         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
8594 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
8595 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
8596 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
8597 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
8598 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
8599 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
8600 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
8601
8602 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
8603 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
8604 this on the collector host:</p>
8605
8606 <blockquote><pre>
8607 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
8608 </pre></blockquote>
8609
8610 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
8611 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
8612
8613 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
8614 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
8615 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
8616 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
8617 written yet.</p>
8618
8619       </div>
8620       <div class="tags">
8621
8622
8623         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>.
8624
8625
8626       </div>
8627     </div>
8628     <div class="padding"></div>
8629
8630     <div class="entry">
8631       <div class="title">
8632         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
8633       </div>
8634       <div class="date">
8635         13th May 2010
8636       </div>
8637       <div class="body">
8638         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
8639 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
8640 has been
8641 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
8642
8643 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
8644 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
8645 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
8646 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
8647 based boot system.  Tollef is
8648 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
8649 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
8650 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
8651 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
8652 at the moment do not.</p>
8653
8654 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
8655 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
8656 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
8657 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
8658 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
8659 way forward.</p>
8660
8661 <p>In the mean time, based on the
8662 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8663 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
8664 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
8665 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
8666 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
8667 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
8668 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
8669 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
8670
8671       </div>
8672       <div class="tags">
8673
8674
8675         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>.
8676
8677
8678       </div>
8679     </div>
8680     <div class="padding"></div>
8681
8682     <div class="entry">
8683       <div class="title">
8684         <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>
8685       </div>
8686       <div class="date">
8687          6th May 2010
8688       </div>
8689       <div class="body">
8690         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
8691 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
8692 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
8693 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
8694 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8695 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
8696 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8697
8698 <blockquote><pre>
8699 CONCURRENCY=makefile
8700 </pre></blockquote>
8701
8702 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
8703 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
8704 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
8705 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
8706 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
8707 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
8708 make this happen.</p>
8709
8710 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
8711 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
8712 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
8713 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
8714 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
8715
8716 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
8717 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
8718 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
8719 fix the remaining issues.</p>
8720
8721 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8722 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8723 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8724 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8725
8726       </div>
8727       <div class="tags">
8728
8729
8730         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>.
8731
8732
8733       </div>
8734     </div>
8735     <div class="padding"></div>
8736
8737     <div class="entry">
8738       <div class="title">
8739         <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>
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="date">
8742         27th July 2009
8743       </div>
8744       <div class="body">
8745         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
8746 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
8747 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
8748 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
8749 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
8750 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
8751 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
8752
8753 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
8754 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
8755 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
8756
8757       </div>
8758       <div class="tags">
8759
8760
8761         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>.
8762
8763
8764       </div>
8765     </div>
8766     <div class="padding"></div>
8767
8768     <div class="entry">
8769       <div class="title">
8770         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
8771       </div>
8772       <div class="date">
8773         22nd July 2009
8774       </div>
8775       <div class="body">
8776         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
8777 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
8778 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
8779 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
8780 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
8781 the package up to date.</p>
8782
8783 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
8784 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
8785 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
8786 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
8787 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
8788 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
8789 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
8790 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
8791 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
8792 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
8793 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
8794 working on the future release.</p>
8795
8796 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
8797 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
8798
8799       </div>
8800       <div class="tags">
8801
8802
8803         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>.
8804
8805
8806       </div>
8807     </div>
8808     <div class="padding"></div>
8809
8810     <div class="entry">
8811       <div class="title">
8812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="date">
8815         24th June 2009
8816       </div>
8817       <div class="body">
8818         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
8819 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
8820 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
8821 funded
8822 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
8823 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
8824 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
8825 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
8826 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
8827 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
8828
8829 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
8830 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
8831 boot:</p>
8832
8833 <ul>
8834
8835 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
8836
8837 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
8838    clock is in UTC.</li>
8839
8840 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
8841    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8842    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
8843
8844 </ul>
8845
8846 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
8847 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
8848 Villegas</a>.
8849
8850 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
8851 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
8852 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
8853 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
8854 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
8855 using this.</p>
8856
8857 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
8858 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
8859 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
8860 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
8861 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
8862 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
8863 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
8864
8865       </div>
8866       <div class="tags">
8867
8868
8869         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>.
8870
8871
8872       </div>
8873     </div>
8874     <div class="padding"></div>
8875
8876     <div class="entry">
8877       <div class="title">
8878         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
8879       </div>
8880       <div class="date">
8881         17th May 2009
8882       </div>
8883       <div class="body">
8884         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
8885 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
8886 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
8887 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
8888 dager siden kom
8889 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
8890 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
8891 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
8892 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
8893 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
8894
8895 <blockquote>
8896 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
8897 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
8898 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
8899 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
8900 </blockquote>
8901
8902 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
8903 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
8904 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
8905 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
8906 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
8907
8908 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
8909 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
8910 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
8911
8912       </div>
8913       <div class="tags">
8914
8915
8916         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
8917
8918
8919       </div>
8920     </div>
8921     <div class="padding"></div>
8922
8923     <div class="entry">
8924       <div class="title">
8925         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
8926       </div>
8927       <div class="date">
8928          7th May 2009
8929       </div>
8930       <div class="body">
8931         <p>Kom over
8932 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
8933 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
8934 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
8935 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
8936 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
8937 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
8938 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
8939
8940       </div>
8941       <div class="tags">
8942
8943
8944         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8945
8946
8947       </div>
8948     </div>
8949     <div class="padding"></div>
8950
8951     <div class="entry">
8952       <div class="title">
8953         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
8954       </div>
8955       <div class="date">
8956          2nd May 2009
8957       </div>
8958       <div class="body">
8959         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
8960 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8961 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8962 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
8963 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8964 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8965 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8966 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8967 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8968 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8969 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8970 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8971 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8972 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8973 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
8974 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8975 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
8976 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8977 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
8978 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
8979
8980 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8981 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8982 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8983 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
8984 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8985 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8986 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8987 betydelige.</p>
8988
8989       </div>
8990       <div class="tags">
8991
8992
8993         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8994
8995
8996       </div>
8997     </div>
8998     <div class="padding"></div>
8999
9000     <div class="entry">
9001       <div class="title">
9002         <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>
9003       </div>
9004       <div class="date">
9005          2nd May 2009
9006       </div>
9007       <div class="body">
9008         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9009 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9010 do not yet know them.</p>
9011
9012 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9013 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9014 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9015 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9016 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9017 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9018 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9019 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9020 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9021 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9022 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9023
9024 <p>The second one is
9025 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9026 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9027 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9028 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9029 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9030 and the company behind it is running
9031 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9032 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9033 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9034 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9035 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9036 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9037 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9038 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9039
9040 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9041 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9042 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9043 surrounded by today.</p>
9044
9045       </div>
9046       <div class="tags">
9047
9048
9049         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>.
9050
9051
9052       </div>
9053     </div>
9054     <div class="padding"></div>
9055
9056     <div class="entry">
9057       <div class="title">
9058         <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>
9059       </div>
9060       <div class="date">
9061         28th April 2009
9062       </div>
9063       <div class="body">
9064         <p>Julien Blache
9065 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9066 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9067 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9068 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9069 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9070 properties.</p>
9071
9072       </div>
9073       <div class="tags">
9074
9075
9076         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>.
9077
9078
9079       </div>
9080     </div>
9081     <div class="padding"></div>
9082
9083     <div class="entry">
9084       <div class="title">
9085         <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>
9086       </div>
9087       <div class="date">
9088         30th March 2009
9089       </div>
9090       <div class="body">
9091         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9092 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9093 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9094 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9095 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9096 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9097 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9098 application.</p>
9099
9100 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9101 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9102 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9103 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9104 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9105 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9106 blocked from doing so.</p>
9107
9108 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9109 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9110 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9111 requirements change.</p>
9112
9113 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9114 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9115 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9116
9117       </div>
9118       <div class="tags">
9119
9120
9121         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>.
9122
9123
9124       </div>
9125     </div>
9126     <div class="padding"></div>
9127
9128     <div class="entry">
9129       <div class="title">
9130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9131       </div>
9132       <div class="date">
9133         29th March 2009
9134       </div>
9135       <div class="body">
9136         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9137 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9138 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9139 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9140 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9141 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9142 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9143 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9144 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9145 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9146 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9147 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9148 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9149 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9150 now. :)</p>
9151
9152       </div>
9153       <div class="tags">
9154
9155
9156         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>.
9157
9158
9159       </div>
9160     </div>
9161     <div class="padding"></div>
9162
9163     <div class="entry">
9164       <div class="title">
9165         <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>
9166       </div>
9167       <div class="date">
9168         29th March 2009
9169       </div>
9170       <div class="body">
9171         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9172 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9173 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9174 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9175 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9176 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9177
9178 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9179 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9180 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9181 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9182 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9183 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9184 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9185 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9186 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9187 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9188 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9189 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9190 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9191
9192 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9193 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9194 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9195 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9196
9197 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9198 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9199
9200 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9201 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9202 new IETF work group?</p>
9203
9204       </div>
9205       <div class="tags">
9206
9207
9208         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>.
9209
9210
9211       </div>
9212     </div>
9213     <div class="padding"></div>
9214
9215     <div class="entry">
9216       <div class="title">
9217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9218       </div>
9219       <div class="date">
9220         15th February 2009
9221       </div>
9222       <div class="body">
9223         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9224 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9225 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9226 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9227 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9228 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9229 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9230 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9231 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9232 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9233 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9234 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9235
9236       </div>
9237       <div class="tags">
9238
9239
9240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9241
9242
9243       </div>
9244     </div>
9245     <div class="padding"></div>
9246
9247     <div class="entry">
9248       <div class="title">
9249         <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>
9250       </div>
9251       <div class="date">
9252          7th December 2008
9253       </div>
9254       <div class="body">
9255         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
9256 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
9257 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
9258 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
9259 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
9260 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
9261 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
9262 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
9263
9264 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
9265 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
9266 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
9267 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
9268 of these cards.</p>
9269
9270       </div>
9271       <div class="tags">
9272
9273
9274         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>.
9275
9276
9277       </div>
9278     </div>
9279     <div class="padding"></div>
9280
9281     <div class="entry">
9282       <div class="title">
9283         <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>
9284       </div>
9285       <div class="date">
9286         25th November 2008
9287       </div>
9288       <div class="body">
9289         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9290 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9291 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9292 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9293 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9294 notes are available on
9295 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9296 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9297 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9298 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9299 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9300 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9301 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9302 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9303 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9304
9305 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9306 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9307
9308       </div>
9309       <div class="tags">
9310
9311
9312         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>.
9313
9314
9315       </div>
9316     </div>
9317     <div class="padding"></div>
9318
9319     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
9320     <div id="sidebar">
9321
9322
9323
9324 <h2>Archive</h2>
9325 <ul>
9326
9327 <li>2015
9328 <ul>
9329
9330 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9331
9332 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9333
9334 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
9335
9336 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
9337
9338 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9339
9340 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
9341
9342 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
9343
9344 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9345
9346 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
9347
9348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9349
9350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9351
9352 </ul></li>
9353
9354 <li>2014
9355 <ul>
9356
9357 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9358
9359 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
9360
9361 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
9362
9363 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9364
9365 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
9366
9367 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9368
9369 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
9370
9371 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9372
9373 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9374
9375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
9376
9377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9378
9379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
9380
9381 </ul></li>
9382
9383 <li>2013
9384 <ul>
9385
9386 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
9387
9388 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
9389
9390 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
9391
9392 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
9393
9394 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9395
9396 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
9397
9398 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9399
9400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9401
9402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9403
9404 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
9405
9406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
9407
9408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9409
9410 </ul></li>
9411
9412 <li>2012
9413 <ul>
9414
9415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9416
9417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
9418
9419 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
9420
9421 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
9422
9423 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
9424
9425 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
9426
9427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
9428
9429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9430
9431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
9432
9433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
9434
9435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
9436
9437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9438
9439 </ul></li>
9440
9441 <li>2011
9442 <ul>
9443
9444 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
9445
9446 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9447
9448 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
9449
9450 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9451
9452 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9453
9454 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9455
9456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9457
9458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9459
9460 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
9461
9462 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9463
9464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9465
9466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
9467
9468 </ul></li>
9469
9470 <li>2010
9471 <ul>
9472
9473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9474
9475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
9476
9477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
9478
9479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
9480
9481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9482
9483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
9484
9485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
9486
9487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
9488
9489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
9490
9491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9492
9493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
9494
9495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
9496
9497 </ul></li>
9498
9499 <li>2009
9500 <ul>
9501
9502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
9503
9504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
9505
9506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
9507
9508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
9509
9510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9511
9512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
9513
9514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
9515
9516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9517
9518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
9519
9520 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9521
9522 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9523
9524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9525
9526 </ul></li>
9527
9528 <li>2008
9529 <ul>
9530
9531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9532
9533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9534
9535 </ul></li>
9536
9537 </ul>
9538
9539
9540
9541 <h2>Tags</h2>
9542 <ul>
9543
9544  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
9545
9546  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
9547
9548  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
9549
9550  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
9551
9552  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
9553
9554  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
9555
9556  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
9557
9558  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
9559
9560  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (113)</a></li>
9561
9562  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
9563
9564  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
9565
9566  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
9567
9568  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
9569
9570  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
9571
9572  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (295)</a></li>
9573
9574  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
9575
9576  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
9577
9578  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (24)</a></li>
9579
9580  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
9581
9582  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
9583
9584  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
9585
9586  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
9587
9588  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
9589
9590  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
9591
9592  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
9593
9594  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
9595
9596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
9597
9598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
9599
9600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
9601
9602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
9603
9604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (271)</a></li>
9605
9606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
9607
9608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
9609
9610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
9611
9612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (57)</a></li>
9613
9614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
9615
9616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
9617
9618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
9619
9620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
9621
9622  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
9623
9624  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
9625
9626  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
9627
9628  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
9629
9630  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
9631
9632  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (44)</a></li>
9633
9634  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
9635
9636  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
9637
9638  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
9639
9640  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
9641
9642  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
9643
9644  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
9645
9646  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
9647
9648  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
9649
9650  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
9651
9652  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
9653
9654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
9655
9656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
9657
9658 </ul>
9659
9660
9661     </div>
9662     <p style="text-align: right">
9663  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
9664 </p>
9665
9666   </body>
9667 </html>