blog/tags/debian/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged debian</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="debian.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  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/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         24th June 2012
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
  32 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
  33 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
  34 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
  35 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
  36 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
  37 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
  38 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
  39 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
  40 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
  41 missing in my book.</p>
  42
  43 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
  44 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
  45 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
  46 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
  47 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
  48 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
  49 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
  50
  51       </div>
  52       <div class="tags">
  53
  54
  55         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>.
  56
  57
  58       </div>
  59     </div>
  60     <div class="padding"></div>
  61
  62     <div class="entry">
  63       <div class="title">
  64         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
  65       </div>
  66       <div class="date">
  67         21st November 2011
  68       </div>
  69       <div class="body">
  70         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
  71 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
  72 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
  73 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
  74 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
  75 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
  76 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
  77 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
  78 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
  79 the tools to do so.</p>
  80
  81 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
  82 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
  83 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
  84 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
  85
  86 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
  87 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
  88 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
  89 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
  90 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
  91 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
  92 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
  93 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
  94
  95 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
  96 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
  97 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
  98
  99 <p><pre>
 100 #!/usr/bin/perl
 101 use strict;
 102 use warnings;
 103 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
 104 BEGIN {
 105     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
 106     my %rhelmodules = (
 107         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
 108         );
 109     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
 110         eval "use $module;";
 111         if ($@) {
 112             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
 113             system("yum install -y $pkg");
 114             eval "use $module;";
 115         }
 116     }
 117 }
 118 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
 119
 120 upgrade_dell();
 121
 122 exit 0;
 123
 124 sub run_firmware_script {
 125     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
 126     unless ($script) {
 127         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
 128         exit 1
 129     }
 130     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
 131
 132     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
 133         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
 134     } else {
 135         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
 136     }
 137 }
 138
 139 sub run_firmware_scripts {
 140     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
 141     # Run firmware packages
 142     for my $dir (@dirs) {
 143         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
 144         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
 145         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
 146             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
 147             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
 148         }
 149         closedir $dh;
 150     }
 151 }
 152
 153 sub download {
 154     my $url = shift;
 155     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
 156     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
 157 }
 158
 159 sub upgrade_dell {
 160     my @dirs;
 161     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 162     chomp $product;
 163
 164     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
 165
 166         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
 167         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
 168
 169         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
 170             CLEANUP => 1
 171             );
 172         chdir($tmpdir);
 173         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
 174         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
 175         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
 176         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
 177         my $fwopts = "-q";
 178         if (@paths) {
 179             for my $url (@paths) {
 180                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
 181             }
 182             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
 183         } else {
 184             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 185             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 186         }
 187         chdir('/');
 188     } else {
 189         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
 190         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
 191     }
 192 }
 193
 194 sub fetch_dell_fw {
 195     my $path = shift;
 196     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
 197     download($url);
 198 }
 199
 200 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
 201 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
 202 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
 203 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
 204     my $filename = shift;
 205
 206     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
 207     chomp $product;
 208     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
 209
 210     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
 211
 212     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
 213     my @paths;
 214     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
 215         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
 216         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
 217         my $oscode;
 218         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
 219             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
 220         } else {
 221             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
 222         }
 223         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
 224         {
 225             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
 226         }
 227     }
 228     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
 229         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
 230
 231         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
 232         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
 233
 234         my $cpath = $component->{path};
 235         for my $path (@paths) {
 236             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
 237                 push(@paths, $cpath);
 238             }
 239         }
 240     }
 241     return @paths;
 242 }
 243 </pre>
 244
 245 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
 246 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
 247 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
 248 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
 249 outdated.</p>
 250
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="tags">
 253
 254
 255         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>.
 256
 257
 258       </div>
 259     </div>
 260     <div class="padding"></div>
 261
 262     <div class="entry">
 263       <div class="title">
 264         <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>
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="date">
 267          4th August 2011
 268       </div>
 269       <div class="body">
 270         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
 271 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
 272 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
 273 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
 274 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
 275 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
 276 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
 277 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
 278 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
 279
 280 <p><blockquote>
 281 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
 282 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
 283 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
 284 </blockquote></p>
 285
 286 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
 287 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
 288 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
 289 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
 290 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
 291 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
 292 hard to explain.</p>
 293
 294 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
 295 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
 296 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
 297 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
 298 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
 299 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
 300 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
 301 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
 302 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
 303 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
 304 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
 305 mode).</p>
 306
 307 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
 308 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
 309 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
 310 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
 311 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
 312 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
 313 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
 314 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
 315 after visiting single user mode.</p>
 316
 317 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
 318 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
 319 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
 320 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
 321 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
 322 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
 323 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
 324 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
 325
 326 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
 327 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
 328 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
 329
 330       </div>
 331       <div class="tags">
 332
 333
 334         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>.
 335
 336
 337       </div>
 338     </div>
 339     <div class="padding"></div>
 340
 341     <div class="entry">
 342       <div class="title">
 343         <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>
 344       </div>
 345       <div class="date">
 346         30th July 2011
 347       </div>
 348       <div class="body">
 349         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
 350 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
 351 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
 352 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
 353 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
 354 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
 355 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
 356 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
 357 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
 358 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
 359 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
 360 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
 361 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
 362
 363 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
 364 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
 365 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
 366 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
 367 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
 368 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
 369 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
 370 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
 371 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
 372
 373 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
 374 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
 375 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
 376 is presented.</p>
 377
 378 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
 379 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
 380 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
 381 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
 382 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
 383 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
 384 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
 385 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
 386 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
 387 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
 388 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
 389 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
 390 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
 391 find time to push this forward.</p>
 392
 393       </div>
 394       <div class="tags">
 395
 396
 397         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>.
 398
 399
 400       </div>
 401     </div>
 402     <div class="padding"></div>
 403
 404     <div class="entry">
 405       <div class="title">
 406         <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>
 407       </div>
 408       <div class="date">
 409         29th July 2011
 410       </div>
 411       <div class="body">
 412         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
 413 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
 414 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
 415 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
 416 issues.</p>
 417
 418 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
 419 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
 420 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
 421
 422 <ol>
 423
 424 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
 425 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
 426 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
 427 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
 428 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
 429 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
 430 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
 431 Debian.</li>
 432
 433 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
 434 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
 435 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
 436 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
 437 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
 438 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
 439 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
 440 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
 441 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
 442 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
 443 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
 444 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
 445 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
 446
 447 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
 448 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
 449 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
 450 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
 451 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
 452 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
 453 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
 454 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
 455 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
 456 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
 457
 458 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
 459 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
 460 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
 461 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
 462 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
 463 latter behaviour.</li>
 464
 465 </ol>
 466
 467 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
 468 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
 469 it do not matter much.</p>
 470
 471 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
 472 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
 473 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
 474
 475       </div>
 476       <div class="tags">
 477
 478
 479         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 480
 481
 482       </div>
 483     </div>
 484     <div class="padding"></div>
 485
 486     <div class="entry">
 487       <div class="title">
 488         <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>
 489       </div>
 490       <div class="date">
 491         26th July 2011
 492       </div>
 493       <div class="body">
 494         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
 495 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
 496 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
 497 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
 498 security support for a few years.</p>
 499
 500 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
 501 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
 502 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
 503 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
 504 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
 505 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
 506 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
 507 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
 508 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
 509 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
 510 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
 511 easier in the future.</p>
 512
 513 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
 514 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
 515 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
 516 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
 517 do not have time for.</p>
 518
 519       </div>
 520       <div class="tags">
 521
 522
 523         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>.
 524
 525
 526       </div>
 527     </div>
 528     <div class="padding"></div>
 529
 530     <div class="entry">
 531       <div class="title">
 532         <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>
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="date">
 535          3rd April 2011
 536       </div>
 537       <div class="body">
 538         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
 539 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
 540 update in English.</p>
 541
 542 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
 543 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
 544 of the British service
 545 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
 546 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
 547 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
 548 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
 549 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
 550 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
 551 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
 552 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
 553 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
 554 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
 555 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
 556 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
 557 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
 558
 559 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
 560 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
 561 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
 562 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
 563 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
 564 public infrastructure.</p>
 565
 566 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
 567 such service?</p>
 568
 569       </div>
 570       <div class="tags">
 571
 572
 573         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>.
 574
 575
 576       </div>
 577     </div>
 578     <div class="padding"></div>
 579
 580     <div class="entry">
 581       <div class="title">
 582         <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>
 583       </div>
 584       <div class="date">
 585         28th January 2011
 586       </div>
 587       <div class="body">
 588         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
 589 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
 590 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
 591 available on the Internet, and check our locally
 592 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
 593 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
 594 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
 595 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
 596 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
 597 out which security holes were present in our free software
 598 collection.</p>
 599
 600 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
 601 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
 602 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
 603 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
 604 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
 605 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
 606 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
 607 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
 608 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
 609 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
 610 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
 611 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
 612 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
 613 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
 614 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
 615 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
 616
 617 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
 618 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
 619 check out, one could look up
 620 <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
 621 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
 622 The most recent one is
 623 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
 624 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
 625 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
 626
 627 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
 628 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
 629 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
 630 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
 631 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
 632 security issues out.</p>
 633
 634 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
 635 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
 636 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
 637 RHEL is providing
 638 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
 639 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
 640 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
 641
 642 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
 643 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
 644 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
 645 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
 646 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
 647 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
 648 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
 649 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
 650 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
 651 established soon.</p>
 652
 653 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
 654 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
 655 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
 656 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
 657 for their packages.</p>
 658
 659       </div>
 660       <div class="tags">
 661
 662
 663         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>.
 664
 665
 666       </div>
 667     </div>
 668     <div class="padding"></div>
 669
 670     <div class="entry">
 671       <div class="title">
 672         <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>
 673       </div>
 674       <div class="date">
 675         23rd January 2011
 676       </div>
 677       <div class="body">
 678         <p>In the
 679 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
 680 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
 681 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
 682 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
 683 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
 684 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
 685 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
 686 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
 687 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
 688 one of my machines like this:</p>
 689
 690 <pre>
 691 loaded modules:
 692 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
 693 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
 694 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
 695 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
 696 10de:03ec pata_amd
 697 10de:03f6 sata_nv
 698 1022:1103 k8temp
 699 109e:036e bttv
 700 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
 701 11ab:4364 sky2
 702 </pre>
 703
 704 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
 705 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
 706
 707 <pre>
 708 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
 709     echo loaded pci modules:
 710     (
 711         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
 712         for address in * ; do
 713             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
 714                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
 715                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
 716                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
 717                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
 718                     echo "$id $module"
 719                 fi
 720             fi
 721         done
 722     )
 723     echo
 724 fi
 725 </pre>
 726
 727 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
 728 mappings:</p>
 729
 730 <pre>
 731 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
 732     echo loaded usb modules:
 733     (
 734         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
 735         for address in * ; do
 736             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
 737                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
 738                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
 739                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
 740                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
 741                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
 742                         echo "$id $module"
 743                     fi
 744                 fi
 745             fi
 746         done
 747     )
 748     echo
 749 fi
 750 </pre>
 751
 752 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
 753 well.</p>
 754
 755       </div>
 756       <div class="tags">
 757
 758
 759         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>.
 760
 761
 762       </div>
 763     </div>
 764     <div class="padding"></div>
 765
 766     <div class="entry">
 767       <div class="title">
 768         <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>
 769       </div>
 770       <div class="date">
 771         22nd December 2010
 772       </div>
 773       <div class="body">
 774         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
 775 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
 776 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
 777 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
 778 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
 779 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
 780 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
 781 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
 782 university.</p>
 783
 784 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
 785 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
 786 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
 787 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
 788 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
 789 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
 790 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
 791 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
 792
 793 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
 794 I perform on a new model.</p>
 795
 796 <ul>
 797
 798 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
 799 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
 800 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
 801
 802 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
 803 installation, X.org is working.</li>
 804
 805 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
 806 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
 807 reported by the program.</li>
 808
 809 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
 810 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
 811 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
 812 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
 813 normally test this by playing
 814 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
 815 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
 816
 817 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
 818 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
 819
 820 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
 821 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
 822
 823 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
 824 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
 825
 826 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
 827 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
 828 few.</li>
 829
 830 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
 831 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
 832 notice this.</li>
 833
 834 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
 835 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
 836 resume.</li>
 837
 838 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
 839 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
 840 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
 841 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
 842 not.</li>
 843
 844 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
 845 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
 846 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
 847 existence.</li>
 848
 849 </ul>
 850
 851 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
 852 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
 853 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
 854 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
 855 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
 856 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
 857 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
 858 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
 859
 860       </div>
 861       <div class="tags">
 862
 863
 864         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>.
 865
 866
 867       </div>
 868     </div>
 869     <div class="padding"></div>
 870
 871     <div class="entry">
 872       <div class="title">
 873         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
 874       </div>
 875       <div class="date">
 876         11th December 2010
 877       </div>
 878       <div class="body">
 879         <p>As I continue to explore
 880 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
 881 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
 882 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
 883
 884 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
 885 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
 886 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
 887 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
 888 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
 889 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
 890 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
 891 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
 892 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
 893 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
 894 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
 895 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
 896 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
 897 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
 898 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
 899 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
 900 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
 901 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
 902 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
 903 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
 904
 905 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
 906 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
 907 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
 908 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
 909 If the Skolelinux foundation
 910 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
 911 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
 912 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
 913 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
 914 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
 915 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
 916 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
 917 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
 918
 919 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
 920 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
 921 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
 922 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
 923 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
 924 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
 925 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
 926 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
 927 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
 928 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
 929 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
 930 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
 931 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
 932 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
 933 currencies.</p>
 934
 935 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
 936 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
 937 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
 938 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
 939 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
 940 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
 941 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
 942 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
 943 BitCoins.  Check out
 944 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
 945 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
 946 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
 947 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
 948 yet.</p>
 949
 950 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
 951 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
 952 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
 953 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
 954 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
 955
 956       </div>
 957       <div class="tags">
 958
 959
 960         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>.
 961
 962
 963       </div>
 964     </div>
 965     <div class="padding"></div>
 966
 967     <div class="entry">
 968       <div class="title">
 969         <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>
 970       </div>
 971       <div class="date">
 972         10th December 2010
 973       </div>
 974       <div class="body">
 975         <p>With this weeks lawless
 976 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
 977 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
 978 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
 979 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
 980 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
 981 A blog post from
 982 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
 983 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
 984 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
 985 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
 986 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
 987 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
 988 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
 989
 990 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
 991 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
 992 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
 993 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
 994 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
 995 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
 996 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
 997 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
 998 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
 999 Debian</a> soon.</p>
1000
1001 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
1002 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
1003 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
1004 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
1005 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
1006 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
1007 you can even get
1008 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
1009 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
1010 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
1011 on the current exchange rates.</p>
1012
1013 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
1014 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
1015 donations to the address
1016 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
1017
1018       </div>
1019       <div class="tags">
1020
1021
1022         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>.
1023
1024
1025       </div>
1026     </div>
1027     <div class="padding"></div>
1028
1029     <div class="entry">
1030       <div class="title">
1031         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
1032       </div>
1033       <div class="date">
1034         27th November 2010
1035       </div>
1036       <div class="body">
1037         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
1038 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
1039 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
1040 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
1041 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
1042 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
1043 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
1044 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
1045
1046 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
1047 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
1048 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
1049 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
1050 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
1051 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
1052 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
1053 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
1054 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
1055 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
1056 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
1057
1058 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
1059 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
1060 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
1061 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
1062 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
1063 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
1064 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
1065 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
1066 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
1067 what is going on.</p>
1068
1069       </div>
1070       <div class="tags">
1071
1072
1073         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>.
1074
1075
1076       </div>
1077     </div>
1078     <div class="padding"></div>
1079
1080     <div class="entry">
1081       <div class="title">
1082         <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>
1083       </div>
1084       <div class="date">
1085         22nd November 2010
1086       </div>
1087       <div class="body">
1088         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
1089 upgrade testing of the
1090 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1091 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
1092 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
1093 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
1094
1095 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1096
1097 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1098
1099 <blockquote><p>
1100   apache2.2-bin
1101   aptdaemon
1102   baobab
1103   binfmt-support
1104   browser-plugin-gnash
1105   cheese-common
1106   cli-common
1107   cups-pk-helper
1108   dmz-cursor-theme
1109   empathy
1110   empathy-common
1111   freedesktop-sound-theme
1112   freeglut3
1113   gconf-defaults-service
1114   gdm-themes
1115   gedit-plugins
1116   geoclue
1117   geoclue-hostip
1118   geoclue-localnet
1119   geoclue-manual
1120   geoclue-yahoo
1121   gnash
1122   gnash-common
1123   gnome
1124   gnome-backgrounds
1125   gnome-cards-data
1126   gnome-codec-install
1127   gnome-core
1128   gnome-desktop-environment
1129   gnome-disk-utility
1130   gnome-screenshot
1131   gnome-search-tool
1132   gnome-session-canberra
1133   gnome-system-log
1134   gnome-themes-extras
1135   gnome-themes-more
1136   gnome-user-share
1137   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1138   gstreamer0.10-tools
1139   gtk2-engines
1140   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1141   gtk2-engines-smooth
1142   hamster-applet
1143   libapache2-mod-dnssd
1144   libapr1
1145   libaprutil1
1146   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
1147   libaprutil1-ldap
1148   libart2.0-cil
1149   libboost-date-time1.42.0
1150   libboost-python1.42.0
1151   libboost-thread1.42.0
1152   libchamplain-0.4-0
1153   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
1154   libcheese-gtk18
1155   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1156   libcryptui0
1157   libdiscid0
1158   libelf1
1159   libepc-1.0-2
1160   libepc-common
1161   libepc-ui-1.0-2
1162   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1163   libfreerdp0
1164   libgconf2.0-cil
1165   libgdata-common
1166   libgdata7
1167   libgdu-gtk0
1168   libgee2
1169   libgeoclue0
1170   libgexiv2-0
1171   libgif4
1172   libglade2.0-cil
1173   libglib2.0-cil
1174   libgmime2.4-cil
1175   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1176   libgnome2.24-cil
1177   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
1178   libgpod-common
1179   libgpod4
1180   libgtk2.0-cil
1181   libgtkglext1
1182   libgtksourceview2.0-common
1183   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1184   libmono-addins0.2-cil
1185   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
1186   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1187   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
1188   libmono-posix2.0-cil
1189   libmono-security2.0-cil
1190   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1191   libmono-system2.0-cil
1192   libmtp8
1193   libmusicbrainz3-6
1194   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
1195   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
1196   libopal3.6.8
1197   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
1198   libpt2.6.7
1199   libpython2.6
1200   librpm1
1201   librpmio1
1202   libsdl1.2debian
1203   libsrtp0
1204   libssh-4
1205   libtelepathy-farsight0
1206   libtelepathy-glib0
1207   libtidy-0.99-0
1208   media-player-info
1209   mesa-utils
1210   mono-2.0-gac
1211   mono-gac
1212   mono-runtime
1213   nautilus-sendto
1214   nautilus-sendto-empathy
1215   p7zip-full
1216   pkg-config
1217   python-aptdaemon
1218   python-aptdaemon-gtk
1219   python-axiom
1220   python-beautifulsoup
1221   python-bugbuddy
1222   python-clientform
1223   python-coherence
1224   python-configobj
1225   python-crypto
1226   python-cupshelpers
1227   python-elementtree
1228   python-epsilon
1229   python-evolution
1230   python-feedparser
1231   python-gdata
1232   python-gdbm
1233   python-gst0.10
1234   python-gtkglext1
1235   python-gtksourceview2
1236   python-httplib2
1237   python-louie
1238   python-mako
1239   python-markupsafe
1240   python-mechanize
1241   python-nevow
1242   python-notify
1243   python-opengl
1244   python-openssl
1245   python-pam
1246   python-pkg-resources
1247   python-pyasn1
1248   python-pysqlite2
1249   python-rdflib
1250   python-serial
1251   python-tagpy
1252   python-twisted-bin
1253   python-twisted-conch
1254   python-twisted-core
1255   python-twisted-web
1256   python-utidylib
1257   python-webkit
1258   python-xdg
1259   python-zope.interface
1260   remmina
1261   remmina-plugin-data
1262   remmina-plugin-rdp
1263   remmina-plugin-vnc
1264   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
1265   rhythmbox-plugins
1266   rpm-common
1267   rpm2cpio
1268   seahorse-plugins
1269   shotwell
1270   software-center
1271   system-config-printer-udev
1272   telepathy-gabble
1273   telepathy-mission-control-5
1274   telepathy-salut
1275   tomboy
1276   totem
1277   totem-coherence
1278   totem-mozilla
1279   totem-plugins
1280   transmission-common
1281   xdg-user-dirs
1282   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
1283   xserver-xephyr
1284 </p></blockquote>
1285
1286 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1287
1288 <blockquote><p>
1289   cheese
1290   ekiga
1291   eog
1292   epiphany-extensions
1293   evolution-exchange
1294   fast-user-switch-applet
1295   file-roller
1296   gcalctool
1297   gconf-editor
1298   gdm
1299   gedit
1300   gedit-common
1301   gnome-games
1302   gnome-games-data
1303   gnome-nettool
1304   gnome-system-tools
1305   gnome-themes
1306   gnuchess
1307   gucharmap
1308   guile-1.8-libs
1309   libavahi-ui0
1310   libdmx1
1311   libgalago3
1312   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
1313   libgtksourceview2.0-0
1314   liblircclient0
1315   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
1316   libspeexdsp1
1317   libsvga1
1318   rhythmbox
1319   seahorse
1320   sound-juicer
1321   system-config-printer
1322   totem-common
1323   transmission-gtk
1324   vinagre
1325   vino
1326 </p></blockquote>
1327
1328 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1329
1330 <blockquote><p>
1331   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1332 </p></blockquote>
1333
1334 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1335
1336 <blockquote><p>
1337 [nothing]
1338 </p></blockquote>
1339
1340 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
1341
1342 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1343
1344 <blockquote><p>
1345   ksmserver
1346 </p></blockquote>
1347
1348 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1349
1350 <blockquote><p>
1351   kwin
1352   network-manager-kde
1353 </p></blockquote>
1354
1355 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1356
1357 <blockquote><p>
1358   arts
1359   dolphin
1360   freespacenotifier
1361   google-gadgets-gst
1362   google-gadgets-xul
1363   kappfinder
1364   kcalc
1365   kcharselect
1366   kde-core
1367   kde-plasma-desktop
1368   kde-standard
1369   kde-window-manager
1370   kdeartwork
1371   kdeartwork-emoticons
1372   kdeartwork-style
1373   kdeartwork-theme-icon
1374   kdebase
1375   kdebase-apps
1376   kdebase-workspace
1377   kdebase-workspace-bin
1378   kdebase-workspace-data
1379   kdeeject
1380   kdelibs
1381   kdeplasma-addons
1382   kdeutils
1383   kdewallpapers
1384   kdf
1385   kfloppy
1386   kgpg
1387   khelpcenter4
1388   kinfocenter
1389   konq-plugins-l10n
1390   konqueror-nsplugins
1391   kscreensaver
1392   kscreensaver-xsavers
1393   ktimer
1394   kwrite
1395   libgle3
1396   libkde4-ruby1.8
1397   libkonq5
1398   libkonq5-templates
1399   libnetpbm10
1400   libplasma-ruby
1401   libplasma-ruby1.8
1402   libqt4-ruby1.8
1403   marble-data
1404   marble-plugins
1405   netpbm
1406   nuvola-icon-theme
1407   plasma-dataengines-workspace
1408   plasma-desktop
1409   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
1410   plasma-runners-addons
1411   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
1412   plasma-scriptengine-python
1413   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
1414   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
1415   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
1416   plasma-scriptengines
1417   plasma-wallpapers-addons
1418   plasma-widget-folderview
1419   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
1420   ruby
1421   sweeper
1422   update-notifier-kde
1423   xscreensaver-data-extra
1424   xscreensaver-gl
1425   xscreensaver-gl-extra
1426   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
1427 </p></blockquote>
1428
1429 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1430
1431 <blockquote><p>
1432   ark
1433   google-gadgets-common
1434   google-gadgets-qt
1435   htdig
1436   kate
1437   kdebase-bin
1438   kdebase-data
1439   kdepasswd
1440   kfind
1441   klipper
1442   konq-plugins
1443   konqueror
1444   ksysguard
1445   ksysguardd
1446   libarchive1
1447   libcln6
1448   libeet1
1449   libeina-svn-06
1450   libggadget-1.0-0b
1451   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
1452   libgps19
1453   libkdecorations4
1454   libkephal4
1455   libkonq4
1456   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
1457   libkscreensaver5
1458   libksgrd4
1459   libksignalplotter4
1460   libkunitconversion4
1461   libkwineffects1a
1462   libmarblewidget4
1463   libntrack-qt4-1
1464   libntrack0
1465   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
1466   libplasmaclock4a
1467   libplasmagenericshell4
1468   libprocesscore4a
1469   libprocessui4a
1470   libqalculate5
1471   libqedje0a
1472   libqtruby4shared2
1473   libqzion0a
1474   libruby1.8
1475   libscim8c2a
1476   libsmokekdecore4-3
1477   libsmokekdeui4-3
1478   libsmokekfile3
1479   libsmokekhtml3
1480   libsmokekio3
1481   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
1482   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
1483   libsmokekparts3
1484   libsmokektexteditor3
1485   libsmokekutils3
1486   libsmokenepomuk3
1487   libsmokephonon3
1488   libsmokeplasma3
1489   libsmokeqtcore4-3
1490   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
1491   libsmokeqtgui4-3
1492   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
1493   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
1494   libsmokeqtscript4-3
1495   libsmokeqtsql4-3
1496   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
1497   libsmokeqttest4-3
1498   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
1499   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
1500   libsmokeqtxml4-3
1501   libsmokesolid3
1502   libsmokesoprano3
1503   libtaskmanager4a
1504   libtidy-0.99-0
1505   libweather-ion4a
1506   libxklavier16
1507   libxxf86misc1
1508   okteta
1509   oxygencursors
1510   plasma-dataengines-addons
1511   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
1512   plasma-widget-lancelot
1513   plasma-widgets-addons
1514   plasma-widgets-workspace
1515   polkit-kde-1
1516   ruby1.8
1517   systemsettings
1518   update-notifier-common
1519 </p></blockquote>
1520
1521 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
1522 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
1523 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
1524 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
1525
1526       </div>
1527       <div class="tags">
1528
1529
1530         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>.
1531
1532
1533       </div>
1534     </div>
1535     <div class="padding"></div>
1536
1537     <div class="entry">
1538       <div class="title">
1539         <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>
1540       </div>
1541       <div class="date">
1542         22nd November 2010
1543       </div>
1544       <div class="body">
1545         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
1546 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
1547 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
1548 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
1549 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
1550 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
1551 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
1552 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
1553 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
1554
1555 <p>I found
1556 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
1557 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
1558 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
1559 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
1560 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
1561 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
1562
1563 <pre>
1564 #!/bin/sh
1565
1566 # Based on
1567 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
1568
1569 set -e
1570 set -x
1571
1572 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
1573     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
1574     exit 1
1575 else
1576     host="$1"
1577 fi
1578
1579 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
1580     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
1581     exit 1
1582 fi
1583
1584 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
1585 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1586 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
1587 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
1588
1589 img=$host.img
1590 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
1591 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
1592
1593 parted $img mklabel msdos
1594 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
1595 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
1596 parted $img set 1 boot on
1597
1598 modprobe dm-mod
1599 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
1600 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
1601
1602 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
1603 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
1604 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
1605
1606 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
1607 losetup -d /dev/loop0
1608 </pre>
1609
1610 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
1611 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
1612
1613 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
1614 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
1615 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
1616 seem to work just fine.</p>
1617
1618       </div>
1619       <div class="tags">
1620
1621
1622         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>.
1623
1624
1625       </div>
1626     </div>
1627     <div class="padding"></div>
1628
1629     <div class="entry">
1630       <div class="title">
1631         <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>
1632       </div>
1633       <div class="date">
1634         20th November 2010
1635       </div>
1636       <div class="body">
1637         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
1638 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
1639 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
1640 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
1641
1642 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
1643 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
1644 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
1645
1646 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
1647
1648 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1649
1650 <blockquote><p>
1651   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
1652   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
1653   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
1654   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
1655   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
1656   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
1657   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
1658   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
1659   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
1660   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
1661   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
1662   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
1663   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
1664   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
1665   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
1666   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
1667   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
1668   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
1669   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
1670   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
1671   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
1672   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
1673   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
1674   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
1675   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
1676   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
1677   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
1678   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
1679   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
1680   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
1681   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
1682   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
1683   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
1684   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
1685   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
1686   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
1687   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
1688   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
1689   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
1690   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
1691   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
1692   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
1693   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
1694   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
1695   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
1696   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
1697   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
1698   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
1699   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
1700   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
1701   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
1702   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
1703   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
1704   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
1705   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
1706   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
1707   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
1708   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
1709   zip
1710 </p></blockquote>
1711
1712 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
1713
1714 <blockquote><p>
1715   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
1716   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
1717   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
1718   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
1719   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
1720   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
1721   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
1722   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
1723   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
1724   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
1725   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
1726   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
1727   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
1728   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
1729   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
1730   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
1731   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
1732   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
1733   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
1734   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
1735   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
1736   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
1737   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
1738   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
1739   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
1740   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
1741   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
1742   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
1743   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
1744 </p></blockquote>
1745
1746 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1747
1748 <blockquote><p>
1749   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
1750 </p></blockquote>
1751
1752 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1753
1754 <blockquote><p>
1755 [nothing]
1756 </p></blockquote>
1757
1758 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
1759
1760 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
1761
1762 <blockquote><p>
1763   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
1764   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
1765   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
1766   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
1767   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
1768   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
1769   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
1770   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
1771   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
1772   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
1773   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
1774   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
1775   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
1776   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
1777   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
1778   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
1779   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
1780   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
1781   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
1782   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
1783   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
1784   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
1785   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
1786   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
1787   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
1788   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
1789   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
1790   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
1791   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
1792   ttf-sazanami-gothic
1793 </p></blockquote>
1794
1795 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
1796
1797 <blockquote><p>
1798   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
1799   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
1800   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
1801   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
1802   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
1803   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
1804   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
1805   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
1806   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
1807   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
1808   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
1809   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
1810   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
1811   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
1812   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
1813   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
1814   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
1815   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
1816   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
1817   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
1818   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
1819   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
1820   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
1821   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
1822   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
1823   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
1824   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
1825   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
1826   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
1827   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
1828   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
1829   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
1830   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
1831 </p></blockquote>
1832
1833 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
1834
1835 <blockquote><p>
1836   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
1837   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
1838   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
1839   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
1840   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
1841   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
1842   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
1843 </p></blockquote>
1844
1845 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
1846
1847 <blockquote><p>
1848   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
1849 </p></blockquote>
1850
1851       </div>
1852       <div class="tags">
1853
1854
1855         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>.
1856
1857
1858       </div>
1859     </div>
1860     <div class="padding"></div>
1861
1862     <div class="entry">
1863       <div class="title">
1864         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
1865       </div>
1866       <div class="date">
1867         20th November 2010
1868       </div>
1869       <div class="body">
1870         <p>Answering
1871 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
1872 call from the Gnash project</a> for
1873 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
1874 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
1875 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
1876 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
1877 releases out more often.</p>
1878
1879 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
1880 I have considered setting up a <a
1881 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
1882 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
1883 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
1884 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
1885 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
1886 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
1887 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
1888 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
1889 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
1890 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
1891 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
1892 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
1893
1894       </div>
1895       <div class="tags">
1896
1897
1898         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>.
1899
1900
1901       </div>
1902     </div>
1903     <div class="padding"></div>
1904
1905     <div class="entry">
1906       <div class="title">
1907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
1908       </div>
1909       <div class="date">
1910          9th November 2010
1911       </div>
1912       <div class="body">
1913         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
1914
1915 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
1916 3D linked in from
1917 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
1918 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
1919
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="tags">
1922
1923
1924         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>.
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/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
1934       </div>
1935       <div class="date">
1936         24th October 2010
1937       </div>
1938       <div class="body">
1939         <p>Some updates.</p>
1940
1941 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
1942 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
1943 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
1944 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
1945 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
1946 :)</p>
1947
1948 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
1949 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
1950 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
1951 It is called
1952 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
1953 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
1954 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
1955 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
1956 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
1957 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
1958
1959 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
1960 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
1961 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
1962 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
1963 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
1964 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
1965 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
1966 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
1967 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
1968 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
1969
1970       </div>
1971       <div class="tags">
1972
1973
1974         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>.
1975
1976
1977       </div>
1978     </div>
1979     <div class="padding"></div>
1980
1981     <div class="entry">
1982       <div class="title">
1983         <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>
1984       </div>
1985       <div class="date">
1986          4th September 2010
1987       </div>
1988       <div class="body">
1989         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
1990 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
1991 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
1992 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
1993 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
1994 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
1995 installed.</p>
1996
1997 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
1998 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
1999 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
2000 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
2001 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2002 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
2003 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
2004 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
2005 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
2006
2007 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
2008 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
2009 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
2010 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
2011 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
2012 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
2013 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
2014 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
2015 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
2016 pages they want to visit.</p>
2017
2018 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
2019 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
2020 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
2021 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
2022 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
2023 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
2024 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
2025 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
2026 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
2027 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
2028 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
2029
2030       </div>
2031       <div class="tags">
2032
2033
2034         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>.
2035
2036
2037       </div>
2038     </div>
2039     <div class="padding"></div>
2040
2041     <div class="entry">
2042       <div class="title">
2043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
2044       </div>
2045       <div class="date">
2046         27th July 2010
2047       </div>
2048       <div class="body">
2049         <p>I discovered this while doing
2050 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
2051 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
2052 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
2053 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
2054 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
2055
2056 <p>An example is from todays
2057 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
2058 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
2059 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
2060 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
2061 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
2062 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
2063 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
2064
2065 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
2066
2067 <blockquote><pre>
2068 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
2069  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
2070   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
2071 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
2072  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
2073 </pre></blockquote>
2074
2075 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
2076 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
2077 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
2078 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
2079 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
2080 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
2081 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
2082 of dependency loops.</p>
2083
2084 <p>Thanks to
2085 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
2086 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
2087 dependencies
2088 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
2089 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
2090
2091 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
2092 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
2093 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
2094 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
2095 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
2096 it.</p>
2097
2098       </div>
2099       <div class="tags">
2100
2101
2102         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>.
2103
2104
2105       </div>
2106     </div>
2107     <div class="padding"></div>
2108
2109     <div class="entry">
2110       <div class="title">
2111         <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>
2112       </div>
2113       <div class="date">
2114         17th July 2010
2115       </div>
2116       <div class="body">
2117         <p>This is a
2118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
2119 on my
2120 <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
2121 work</a> on
2122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
2123 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
2124
2125 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
2126 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
2127 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
2128 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
2129
2130 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
2131 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
2132 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
2133
2134 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
2135
2136 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
2137 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
2138 the web.
2139
2140 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
2141 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
2142 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
2143 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
2144 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
2145 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
2146
2147 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
2148 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
2149 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
2150 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
2151 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
2152 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
2153 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
2154 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
2155 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
2156 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
2157 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
2158 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
2159 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
2160 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
2161 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
2162 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
2163
2164 <blockquote><pre>
2165 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2166   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2167   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2168   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2169   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2170   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2171   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2172
2173 ldapsearch -h ldap \
2174   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
2175   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
2176   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
2177   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
2178   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
2179 </pre></blockquote>
2180
2181 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
2182 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
2183 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
2184 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2185 also exist.</p>
2186
2187 <blockquote><pre>
2188 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2189 objectclass: top
2190 objectclass: dnsdomain
2191 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2192 dc: tjener
2193 arecord: 10.0.2.2
2194 associateddomain: tjener.intern
2195
2196 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2197 objectclass: top
2198 objectclass: dnsdomain2
2199 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2200 dc: 2
2201 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
2202 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
2203 </pre></blockquote>
2204
2205 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
2206 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
2207 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
2208 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
2209 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
2210 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
2211 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
2212 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
2213 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
2214 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
2215 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
2216 instead.</p>
2217
2218 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
2219 like this:</p>
2220
2221 <blockquote><pre>
2222 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2223   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
2224   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
2225   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
2226   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
2227   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
2228
2229 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
2230   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
2231 </pre></blockquote>
2232
2233 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
2234 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
2235 reverse lookups.</p>
2236
2237 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
2238 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
2239 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
2240 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
2241
2242 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
2243 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
2244 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
2245
2246 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
2247 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
2248 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
2249 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
2250 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
2251
2252 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
2253 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
2254 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
2255 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
2256 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
2257
2258 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
2259 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
2260 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
2261 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
2262 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
2263 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
2264
2265 <blockquote><pre>
2266 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
2267     SUP top
2268     AUXILIARY
2269     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
2270           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
2271           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
2272           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
2273           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
2274     ))
2275 </pre></blockquote>
2276
2277 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
2278 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
2279 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
2280 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
2281 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
2282 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
2283
2284 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
2285
2286 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
2287 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
2288 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
2289 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
2290 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
2291
2292 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
2293 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
2294 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
2295 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
2296
2297 <blockquote><pre>
2298 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
2299 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
2300 </pre></blockquote>
2301
2302 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
2303 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
2304 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
2305 search result is this entry:</p>
2306
2307 <blockquote><pre>
2308 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2309 cn: dhcp
2310 objectClass: top
2311 objectClass: dhcpServer
2312 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2313 </pre></blockquote>
2314
2315 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
2316 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
2317 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
2318 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
2319 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
2320 The search result is this entry:</p>
2321
2322 <blockquote><pre>
2323 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2324 cn: DHCP Config
2325 objectClass: top
2326 objectClass: dhcpService
2327 objectClass: dhcpOptions
2328 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2329 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
2330 dhcpStatements: authoritative
2331 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
2332 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
2333 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
2334 </pre></blockquote>
2335
2336 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
2337 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
2338 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
2339 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
2340 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
2341 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
2342 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
2343 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
2344 related computer objects.</p>
2345
2346 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
2347 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
2348 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
2349 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
2350 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
2351 like:</p>
2352
2353 <blockquote><pre>
2354 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2355 cn: hostname
2356 objectClass: top
2357 objectClass: dhcpHost
2358 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2359 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
2360 </pre></blockquote>
2361
2362 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
2363 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
2364 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
2365 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
2366 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
2367 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
2368 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
2369 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
2370 structural object class.
2371
2372 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
2373
2374 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
2375 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
2376 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
2377 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
2378 in the configuration.</p>
2379
2380 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
2381 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
2382 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
2383 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
2384 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
2385 structure.</p>
2386
2387 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
2388 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
2389
2390 <blockquote><pre>
2391 ou=services
2392   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
2393     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
2394     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2395       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2396         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2397     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
2398       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
2399         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
2400     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
2401       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
2402 </pre></blockquote>
2403
2404 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
2405 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
2406 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
2407 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
2408
2409 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
2410 like this:</p>
2411
2412 <blockquote><pre>
2413 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2414 dc: hostname
2415 objectClass: top
2416 objectClass: dhcpHost
2417 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2418 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
2419 associateddomain: hostname.intern
2420 arecord: 10.11.12.13
2421 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2422 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
2423 </pre></blockquote>
2424
2425 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
2426 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
2427 auxiliary object class.</p>
2428
2429       </div>
2430       <div class="tags">
2431
2432
2433         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>.
2434
2435
2436       </div>
2437     </div>
2438     <div class="padding"></div>
2439
2440     <div class="entry">
2441       <div class="title">
2442         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
2443       </div>
2444       <div class="date">
2445         14th July 2010
2446       </div>
2447       <div class="body">
2448         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
2449 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
2450 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
2451 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
2452 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
2453
2454 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
2455 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
2456
2457 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
2458 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
2459 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
2460 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
2461 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
2462 to a slave DNS server.</p>
2463
2464 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
2465 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
2466 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
2467 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
2468 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
2469 seem to work.</p>
2470
2471 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
2472 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
2473 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
2474 this:</p>
2475
2476 <blockquote><pre>
2477   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2478   cn: hostname
2479   objectClass: dhcphost
2480   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
2481   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
2482   associateddomain: hostname.intern
2483   arecord: 10.11.12.13
2484   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
2485   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
2486   ldapconfigsound: Y
2487 </pre></blockquote>
2488
2489 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
2490 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
2491 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
2492 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
2493
2494 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
2495 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
2496 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
2497 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
2498 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
2499 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
2500 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
2501 might be a good place to put it.</p>
2502
2503 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2504 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2505
2506       </div>
2507       <div class="tags">
2508
2509
2510         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>.
2511
2512
2513       </div>
2514     </div>
2515     <div class="padding"></div>
2516
2517     <div class="entry">
2518       <div class="title">
2519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
2520       </div>
2521       <div class="date">
2522         11th July 2010
2523       </div>
2524       <div class="body">
2525         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
2526 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
2527 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
2528 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
2529
2530 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
2531 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
2532 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
2533 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
2534 LTSP clients.</p>
2535
2536 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
2537 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
2538 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
2539
2540 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
2541 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
2542 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
2543
2544 <blockquote><pre>
2545 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
2546 #
2547 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
2548 #
2549 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
2550 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
2551 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
2552 #
2553 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
2554 # existence of attribute names.
2555 #
2556 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
2557 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
2558 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
2559 #
2560 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
2561 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
2562 #
2563 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
2564 #     SUP top
2565 #     AUXILIARY
2566 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
2567
2568 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
2569 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
2570     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
2571     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
2572         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
2573         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
2574             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
2575             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
2576             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
2577             # bass value on to clients
2578             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
2579         done
2580     done
2581 fi
2582 </pre></blockquote>
2583
2584 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
2585 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
2586 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
2587 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
2588 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
2589
2590 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2591 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2592
2593 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
2594 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
2595 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
2596 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
2597 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
2598 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
2599
2600       </div>
2601       <div class="tags">
2602
2603
2604         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>.
2605
2606
2607       </div>
2608     </div>
2609     <div class="padding"></div>
2610
2611     <div class="entry">
2612       <div class="title">
2613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2614       </div>
2615       <div class="date">
2616          9th July 2010
2617       </div>
2618       <div class="body">
2619         <p>Since
2620 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
2621 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
2622 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
2623 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
2624 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
2625 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
2626 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
2627 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
2628 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
2629 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
2630 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
2631 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
2632 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
2633
2634       </div>
2635       <div class="tags">
2636
2637
2638         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
2639
2640
2641       </div>
2642     </div>
2643     <div class="padding"></div>
2644
2645     <div class="entry">
2646       <div class="title">
2647         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
2648       </div>
2649       <div class="date">
2650          3rd July 2010
2651       </div>
2652       <div class="body">
2653         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
2654 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
2655 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
2656 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
2657 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
2658 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
2659 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
2660 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
2661
2662 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
2663 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
2664 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
2665 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
2666 publish the difference.</p>
2667
2668 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2669
2670 <blockquote><p>
2671   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2672   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
2673   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
2674   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2675   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
2676   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
2677   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
2678   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
2679 </p></blockquote>
2680
2681 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2682
2683 <blockquote><p>
2684   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
2685   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
2686   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
2687   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
2688   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
2689   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
2690   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2691   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2692   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2693   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
2694   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
2695   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
2696   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
2697   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
2698   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
2699   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2700   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
2701   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
2702   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
2703   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
2704 </p></blockquote>
2705
2706 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2707
2708 <blockquote><p>
2709   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
2710   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
2711   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2712   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2713   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
2714   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
2715   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
2716   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2717   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2718   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2719   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2720   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
2721   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
2722   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
2723   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
2724   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
2725   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
2726   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
2727   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
2728   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
2729   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
2730 </p></blockquote>
2731
2732 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2733
2734 <blockquote><p>
2735   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
2736   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
2737   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
2738 </p></blockquote>
2739
2740 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
2741 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
2742 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
2743 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
2744 the difference somewhat.
2745
2746       </div>
2747       <div class="tags">
2748
2749
2750         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>.
2751
2752
2753       </div>
2754     </div>
2755     <div class="padding"></div>
2756
2757     <div class="entry">
2758       <div class="title">
2759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
2760       </div>
2761       <div class="date">
2762         28th June 2010
2763       </div>
2764       <div class="body">
2765         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
2766 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
2767 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
2768 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
2769 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
2770 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
2771 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
2772 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
2773 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
2774 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
2775
2776 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
2777 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
2778 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
2779 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
2780 released.</p>
2781
2782 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
2783 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
2784 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
2785 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
2786
2787 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
2788 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2789
2790 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
2791 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
2792 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
2793 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
2794 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
2795
2796       </div>
2797       <div class="tags">
2798
2799
2800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
2801
2802
2803       </div>
2804     </div>
2805     <div class="padding"></div>
2806
2807     <div class="entry">
2808       <div class="title">
2809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="date">
2812         24th June 2010
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="body">
2815         <p>A while back, I
2816 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
2817 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
2818 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
2819 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
2820
2821 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
2822 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
2823 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
2824 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
2825
2826 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
2827 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
2828 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
2829 Debian Edu.</p>
2830
2831 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
2832 the
2833 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
2834 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
2835 available today from IETF.</p>
2836
2837 <pre>
2838 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
2839 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
2840 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
2841  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
2842         NAME 'dhcpHost'
2843         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
2844 -       SUP top
2845 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
2846         MUST cn
2847         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
2848         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
2849 </pre>
2850
2851 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
2852 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
2853 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
2854
2855 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
2856 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
2857
2858       </div>
2859       <div class="tags">
2860
2861
2862         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>.
2863
2864
2865       </div>
2866     </div>
2867     <div class="padding"></div>
2868
2869     <div class="entry">
2870       <div class="title">
2871         <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>
2872       </div>
2873       <div class="date">
2874         16th June 2010
2875       </div>
2876       <div class="body">
2877         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
2878 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
2879 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
2880 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
2881 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
2882 this:
2883
2884 <blockquote><pre>
2885 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2886 tasksel --new-install
2887 </pre></blockquote>
2888
2889 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
2890 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
2891 any output what so ever.
2892
2893 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
2894 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
2895 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
2896 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
2897 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
2898 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
2899 code like this:
2900
2901 <blockquote><pre>
2902 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
2903 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
2904 $cmd
2905 </pre></blockquote>
2906
2907 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
2908 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
2909 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
2910 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
2911 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
2912 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
2913 installation.</p>
2914
2915 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
2916 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
2917 like this.</p>
2918
2919       </div>
2920       <div class="tags">
2921
2922
2923         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>.
2924
2925
2926       </div>
2927     </div>
2928     <div class="padding"></div>
2929
2930     <div class="entry">
2931       <div class="title">
2932         <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>
2933       </div>
2934       <div class="date">
2935         13th June 2010
2936       </div>
2937       <div class="body">
2938         <p>My
2939 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
2940 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
2941 finally made the upgrade logs available from
2942 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
2943 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
2944 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
2945 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
2946
2947 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
2948 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
2949 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
2950 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
2951 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
2952 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
2953 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
2954 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
2955
2956 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
2957 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
2958 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
2959 too surprising.</p>
2960
2961 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
2962 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
2963 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
2964 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
2965 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
2966 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
2967 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
2968 continue.</p>
2969
2970 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
2971 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
2972   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
2973   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
2974   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
2975   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
2976   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
2977   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2978   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
2979   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
2980   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
2981   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
2982   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
2983   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
2984   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
2985   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
2986   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
2987   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
2988   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
2989   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
2990   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
2991   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
2992   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
2993   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
2994   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
2995   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
2996   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
2997   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
2998   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
2999   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
3000
3001 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
3002
3003 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
3004   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
3005   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
3006   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
3007   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3008   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
3009   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
3010   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
3011   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
3012   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
3013   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3014   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
3015   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3016   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
3017   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
3018   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
3019   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
3020   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
3021   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
3022   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
3023   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
3024   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
3025   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
3026   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
3027   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3028   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
3029   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
3030   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
3031   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
3032   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3033   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3034   zip</p>
3035
3036 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
3037
3038 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
3039   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
3040   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
3041   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
3042   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
3043   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
3044   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3045   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3046   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
3047   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
3048   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
3049   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
3050   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3051   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3052   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3053   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3054   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3055   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
3056   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
3057   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
3058   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
3059   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
3060   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
3061   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
3062   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
3063   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
3064   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
3065   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
3066
3067 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
3068 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
3069   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3070   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
3071   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
3072   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3073   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
3074   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
3075   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3076   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
3077   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
3078   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
3079   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
3080   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
3081   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
3082   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
3083   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
3084   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3085   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3086   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
3087   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
3088   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3089   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
3090   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
3091   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3092   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3093   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
3094   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
3095   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
3096   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
3097   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
3098   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
3099   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
3100   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
3101   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
3102   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
3103   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
3104   xulrunner-1.9</p>
3105
3106
3107       </div>
3108       <div class="tags">
3109
3110
3111         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>.
3112
3113
3114       </div>
3115     </div>
3116     <div class="padding"></div>
3117
3118     <div class="entry">
3119       <div class="title">
3120         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="date">
3123         11th June 2010
3124       </div>
3125       <div class="body">
3126         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
3127 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
3128 have been discovered and reported in the process
3129 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
3130 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
3131 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
3132 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
3133 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
3134
3135 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
3136 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
3137 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
3138 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
3139 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
3140 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
3141
3142 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
3143 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
3144 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3145 is created.  The bug report
3146 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
3147 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
3148 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
3149 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
3150 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
3151 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
3152 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
3153 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
3154 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
3155 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
3156 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
3157 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
3158 Debian Squeeze.</p>
3159
3160 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
3161 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
3162 trick:</p>
3163
3164 <blockquote><pre>
3165 #!/bin/sh
3166 set -ex
3167
3168 if [ "$1" ] ; then
3169     desktop=$1
3170 else
3171     desktop=gnome
3172 fi
3173
3174 from=lenny
3175 to=squeeze
3176
3177 exec &lt; /dev/null
3178 unset LANG
3179 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
3180 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
3181 fuser -mv .
3182 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
3183 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3184 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
3185 #!/bin/sh
3186 exit 101
3187 EOF
3188 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
3189 exit_cleanup() {
3190     umount $tmpdir/proc
3191 }
3192 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
3193 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
3194 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
3195
3196 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
3197
3198 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
3199 # to return the correct answers.
3200 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
3201     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
3202
3203 # Include the desktop and laptop task
3204 for test in desktop laptop ; do
3205     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
3206 #!/bin/sh
3207 exit 2
3208 EOF
3209     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
3210 done
3211
3212 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
3213 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
3214 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
3215 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
3216
3217 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
3218 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
3219 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
3220 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
3221 fuser -mv
3222 </pre></blockquote>
3223
3224 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
3225 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
3226 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
3227 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
3228 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
3229 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
3230
3231 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
3232 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
3233 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
3234 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
3235 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
3236 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
3237 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
3238
3239 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
3240 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
3241 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
3242 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
3243 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
3244 packages.</p>
3245
3246       </div>
3247       <div class="tags">
3248
3249
3250         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>.
3251
3252
3253       </div>
3254     </div>
3255     <div class="padding"></div>
3256
3257     <div class="entry">
3258       <div class="title">
3259         <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>
3260       </div>
3261       <div class="date">
3262          6th June 2010
3263       </div>
3264       <div class="body">
3265         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
3266 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
3267 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
3268 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
3269 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
3270 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
3271 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
3272
3273 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
3274 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
3275 COLUMNS):</p>
3276
3277 <blockquote><pre>
3278 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
3279 previous=N
3280 PREVLEVEL=
3281 RUNLEVEL=
3282 runlevel=S
3283 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
3284 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
3285 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
3286 </pre></blockquote>
3287
3288 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
3289 script.</p>
3290
3291 <blockquote><pre>
3292 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
3293 previous=N
3294 PREVLEVEL=N
3295 RUNLEVEL=S
3296 runlevel=S
3297 </pre></blockquote>
3298
3299 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
3300 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
3301 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
3302
3303 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
3304 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
3305 choice.</p>
3306
3307       </div>
3308       <div class="tags">
3309
3310
3311         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>.
3312
3313
3314       </div>
3315     </div>
3316     <div class="padding"></div>
3317
3318     <div class="entry">
3319       <div class="title">
3320         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
3321       </div>
3322       <div class="date">
3323          6th June 2010
3324       </div>
3325       <div class="body">
3326         <p>Via the
3327 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
3328 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
3329 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
3330 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
3331 following the standards wars of today.</p>
3332
3333       </div>
3334       <div class="tags">
3335
3336
3337         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>.
3338
3339
3340       </div>
3341     </div>
3342     <div class="padding"></div>
3343
3344     <div class="entry">
3345       <div class="title">
3346         <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>
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="date">
3349          3rd June 2010
3350       </div>
3351       <div class="body">
3352         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
3353 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
3354 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
3355 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
3356 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
3357
3358 <blockquote><pre>
3359 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
3360   vendor                    count
3361   Dell Computer Corporation     1
3362     PowerEdge 1750              1
3363   IBM                           1
3364     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
3365   Intel                         2
3366   [no-dmi-info]                 3
3367 maintainer:~#
3368 </pre></blockquote>
3369
3370 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
3371 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
3372 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
3373 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
3374 option to list the individual machines.</p>
3375
3376 <p>A larger list is
3377 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
3378 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
3379 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
3380 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
3381 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
3382 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
3383 collector.</p>
3384
3385       </div>
3386       <div class="tags">
3387
3388
3389         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>.
3390
3391
3392       </div>
3393     </div>
3394     <div class="padding"></div>
3395
3396     <div class="entry">
3397       <div class="title">
3398         <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>
3399       </div>
3400       <div class="date">
3401          1st June 2010
3402       </div>
3403       <div class="body">
3404         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
3405 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
3406 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
3407 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
3408 wait.</p>
3409
3410 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
3411 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
3412 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
3413 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
3414 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
3415 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
3416
3417 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
3418 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
3419 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
3420 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
3421 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
3422 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
3423 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
3424 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
3425
3426 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
3427
3428       </div>
3429       <div class="tags">
3430
3431
3432         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>.
3433
3434
3435       </div>
3436     </div>
3437     <div class="padding"></div>
3438
3439     <div class="entry">
3440       <div class="title">
3441         <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>
3442       </div>
3443       <div class="date">
3444         27th May 2010
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="body">
3447         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
3448 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
3449 issues are known and should be solved:
3450
3451 <p><ul>
3452
3453 <li>The wicd package seen to
3454 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
3455 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
3456 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
3457 seem to be on the case.</li>
3458
3459 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
3460 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
3461 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
3462 maintainer is on the case.</li>
3463
3464 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
3465 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
3466 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
3467 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
3468 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
3469 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
3470 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
3471 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
3472
3473 </ul></p>
3474
3475 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
3476 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
3477 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
3478 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
3479
3480 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3481 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3482 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3483 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3484
3485 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
3486
3487       </div>
3488       <div class="tags">
3489
3490
3491         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>.
3492
3493
3494       </div>
3495     </div>
3496     <div class="padding"></div>
3497
3498     <div class="entry">
3499       <div class="title">
3500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
3501       </div>
3502       <div class="date">
3503         22nd May 2010
3504       </div>
3505       <div class="body">
3506         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
3507 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
3508 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
3509 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
3510
3511 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
3512 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
3513 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
3514 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
3515 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
3516 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
3517 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
3518 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
3519 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
3520 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
3521 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
3522 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
3523 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
3524 going to work.</p>
3525
3526 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
3527 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
3528 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
3529 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
3530 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
3531 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
3532 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
3533 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
3534 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
3535 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
3536 Edu.</p>
3537
3538 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
3539 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
3540 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
3541 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
3542 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
3543 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
3544
3545 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
3546 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
3547
3548       </div>
3549       <div class="tags">
3550
3551
3552         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>.
3553
3554
3555       </div>
3556     </div>
3557     <div class="padding"></div>
3558
3559     <div class="entry">
3560       <div class="title">
3561         <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>
3562       </div>
3563       <div class="date">
3564         14th May 2010
3565       </div>
3566       <div class="body">
3567         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
3568 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
3569 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
3570 expected, if I am to believe the
3571 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3572 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
3573 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
3574 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
3575 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
3576 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
3577 version.</p>
3578
3579 More information about
3580 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3581 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
3582 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
3583 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
3584
3585 <blockquote><pre>
3586 CONCURRENCY=none
3587 </pre></blockquote>
3588
3589 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3590 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3591 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3592 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3593
3594       </div>
3595       <div class="tags">
3596
3597
3598         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>.
3599
3600
3601       </div>
3602     </div>
3603     <div class="padding"></div>
3604
3605     <div class="entry">
3606       <div class="title">
3607         <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>
3608       </div>
3609       <div class="date">
3610         14th May 2010
3611       </div>
3612       <div class="body">
3613         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
3614 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
3615 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
3616 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
3617 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
3618 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
3619 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
3620 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
3621
3622 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
3623 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
3624 this on the collector host:</p>
3625
3626 <blockquote><pre>
3627 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
3628 </pre></blockquote>
3629
3630 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
3631 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
3632
3633 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
3634 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
3635 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
3636 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
3637 written yet.</p>
3638
3639       </div>
3640       <div class="tags">
3641
3642
3643         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>.
3644
3645
3646       </div>
3647     </div>
3648     <div class="padding"></div>
3649
3650     <div class="entry">
3651       <div class="title">
3652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
3653       </div>
3654       <div class="date">
3655         13th May 2010
3656       </div>
3657       <div class="body">
3658         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
3659 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
3660 has been
3661 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
3662
3663 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
3664 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
3665 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
3666 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
3667 based boot system.  Tollef is
3668 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
3669 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
3670 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
3671 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
3672 at the moment do not.</p>
3673
3674 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
3675 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
3676 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
3677 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
3678 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
3679 way forward.</p>
3680
3681 <p>In the mean time, based on the
3682 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
3683 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
3684 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
3685 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
3686 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
3687 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
3688 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
3689 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
3690
3691       </div>
3692       <div class="tags">
3693
3694
3695         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>.
3696
3697
3698       </div>
3699     </div>
3700     <div class="padding"></div>
3701
3702     <div class="entry">
3703       <div class="title">
3704         <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>
3705       </div>
3706       <div class="date">
3707          6th May 2010
3708       </div>
3709       <div class="body">
3710         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
3711 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
3712 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
3713 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
3714 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3715 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
3716 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
3717
3718 <blockquote><pre>
3719 CONCURRENCY=makefile
3720 </pre></blockquote>
3721
3722 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
3723 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
3724 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
3725 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
3726 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
3727 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
3728 make this happen.</p>
3729
3730 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
3731 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
3732 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
3733 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
3734 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
3735
3736 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
3737 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
3738 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
3739 fix the remaining issues.</p>
3740
3741 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
3742 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
3743 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3744 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
3745
3746       </div>
3747       <div class="tags">
3748
3749
3750         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>.
3751
3752
3753       </div>
3754     </div>
3755     <div class="padding"></div>
3756
3757     <div class="entry">
3758       <div class="title">
3759         <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>
3760       </div>
3761       <div class="date">
3762         27th July 2009
3763       </div>
3764       <div class="body">
3765         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
3766 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
3767 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
3768 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
3769 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
3770 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
3771 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
3772
3773 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
3774 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
3775 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
3776
3777       </div>
3778       <div class="tags">
3779
3780
3781         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>.
3782
3783
3784       </div>
3785     </div>
3786     <div class="padding"></div>
3787
3788     <div class="entry">
3789       <div class="title">
3790         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
3791       </div>
3792       <div class="date">
3793         22nd July 2009
3794       </div>
3795       <div class="body">
3796         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
3797 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
3798 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
3799 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
3800 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
3801 the package up to date.</p>
3802
3803 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
3804 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
3805 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
3806 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
3807 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
3808 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
3809 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
3810 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
3811 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
3812 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
3813 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
3814 working on the future release.</p>
3815
3816 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
3817 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
3818
3819       </div>
3820       <div class="tags">
3821
3822
3823         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>.
3824
3825
3826       </div>
3827     </div>
3828     <div class="padding"></div>
3829
3830     <div class="entry">
3831       <div class="title">
3832         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
3833       </div>
3834       <div class="date">
3835         24th June 2009
3836       </div>
3837       <div class="body">
3838         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
3839 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
3840 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
3841 funded
3842 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
3843 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
3844 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
3845 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
3846 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
3847 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
3848
3849 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
3850 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
3851 boot:</p>
3852
3853 <ul>
3854
3855 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
3856
3857 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
3858    clock is in UTC.</li>
3859
3860 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
3861    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
3862    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
3863
3864 </ul>
3865
3866 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
3867 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
3868 Villegas</a>.
3869
3870 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
3871 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
3872 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
3873 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
3874 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
3875 using this.</p>
3876
3877 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
3878 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
3879 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
3880 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
3881 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
3882 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
3883 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
3884
3885       </div>
3886       <div class="tags">
3887
3888
3889         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>.
3890
3891
3892       </div>
3893     </div>
3894     <div class="padding"></div>
3895
3896     <div class="entry">
3897       <div class="title">
3898         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
3899       </div>
3900       <div class="date">
3901         17th May 2009
3902       </div>
3903       <div class="body">
3904         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
3905 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
3906 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
3907 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
3908 dager siden kom
3909 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
3910 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
3911 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
3912 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
3913 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
3914
3915 <blockquote>
3916 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
3917 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
3918 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
3919 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
3920 </blockquote>
3921
3922 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
3923 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
3924 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
3925 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
3926 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
3927
3928 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
3929 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
3930 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
3931
3932       </div>
3933       <div class="tags">
3934
3935
3936         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>.
3937
3938
3939       </div>
3940     </div>
3941     <div class="padding"></div>
3942
3943     <div class="entry">
3944       <div class="title">
3945         <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>
3946       </div>
3947       <div class="date">
3948          7th May 2009
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="body">
3951         <p>Kom over
3952 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
3953 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
3954 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
3955 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
3956 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
3957 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
3958 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
3959
3960       </div>
3961       <div class="tags">
3962
3963
3964         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>.
3965
3966
3967       </div>
3968     </div>
3969     <div class="padding"></div>
3970
3971     <div class="entry">
3972       <div class="title">
3973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
3974       </div>
3975       <div class="date">
3976          2nd May 2009
3977       </div>
3978       <div class="body">
3979         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
3980 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
3981 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
3982 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
3983 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
3984 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
3985 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
3986 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
3987 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
3988 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
3989 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
3990 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
3991 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
3992 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
3993 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
3994 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
3995 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
3996 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
3997 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
3998 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
3999
4000 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
4001 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
4002 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
4003 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
4004 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
4005 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
4006 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
4007 betydelige.</p>
4008
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="tags">
4011
4012
4013         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>.
4014
4015
4016       </div>
4017     </div>
4018     <div class="padding"></div>
4019
4020     <div class="entry">
4021       <div class="title">
4022         <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>
4023       </div>
4024       <div class="date">
4025          2nd May 2009
4026       </div>
4027       <div class="body">
4028         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
4029 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
4030 do not yet know them.</p>
4031
4032 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
4033 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
4034 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
4035 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
4036 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
4037 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
4038 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
4039 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
4040 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
4041 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
4042 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
4043
4044 <p>The second one is
4045 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
4046 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
4047 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
4048 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
4049 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
4050 and the company behind it is running
4051 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
4052 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
4053 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
4054 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
4055 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
4056 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
4057 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
4058 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
4059
4060 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
4061 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
4062 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
4063 surrounded by today.</p>
4064
4065       </div>
4066       <div class="tags">
4067
4068
4069         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>.
4070
4071
4072       </div>
4073     </div>
4074     <div class="padding"></div>
4075
4076     <div class="entry">
4077       <div class="title">
4078         <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>
4079       </div>
4080       <div class="date">
4081         28th April 2009
4082       </div>
4083       <div class="body">
4084         <p>Julien Blache
4085 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
4086 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
4087 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
4088 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
4089 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
4090 properties.</p>
4091
4092       </div>
4093       <div class="tags">
4094
4095
4096         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>.
4097
4098
4099       </div>
4100     </div>
4101     <div class="padding"></div>
4102
4103     <div class="entry">
4104       <div class="title">
4105         <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>
4106       </div>
4107       <div class="date">
4108         30th March 2009
4109       </div>
4110       <div class="body">
4111         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
4112 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
4113 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
4114 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
4115 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
4116 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
4117 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
4118 application.</p>
4119
4120 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
4121 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
4122 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
4123 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
4124 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
4125 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
4126 blocked from doing so.</p>
4127
4128 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
4129 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
4130 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
4131 requirements change.</p>
4132
4133 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
4134 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
4135 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
4136
4137       </div>
4138       <div class="tags">
4139
4140
4141         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>.
4142
4143
4144       </div>
4145     </div>
4146     <div class="padding"></div>
4147
4148     <div class="entry">
4149       <div class="title">
4150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
4151       </div>
4152       <div class="date">
4153         29th March 2009
4154       </div>
4155       <div class="body">
4156         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
4157 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
4158 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
4159 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
4160 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
4161 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
4162 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
4163 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
4164 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
4165 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
4166 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
4167 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
4168 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
4169 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
4170 now. :)</p>
4171
4172       </div>
4173       <div class="tags">
4174
4175
4176         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>.
4177
4178
4179       </div>
4180     </div>
4181     <div class="padding"></div>
4182
4183     <div class="entry">
4184       <div class="title">
4185         <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>
4186       </div>
4187       <div class="date">
4188         29th March 2009
4189       </div>
4190       <div class="body">
4191         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
4192 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
4193 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
4194 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
4195 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
4196 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
4197
4198 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
4199 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
4200 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
4201 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
4202 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
4203 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
4204 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
4205 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
4206 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
4207 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
4208 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
4209 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
4210 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
4211
4212 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
4213 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
4214 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
4215 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
4216
4217 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
4218 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
4219
4220 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
4221 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
4222 new IETF work group?</p>
4223
4224       </div>
4225       <div class="tags">
4226
4227
4228         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>.
4229
4230
4231       </div>
4232     </div>
4233     <div class="padding"></div>
4234
4235     <div class="entry">
4236       <div class="title">
4237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
4238       </div>
4239       <div class="date">
4240         15th February 2009
4241       </div>
4242       <div class="body">
4243         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
4244 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
4245 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
4246 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
4247 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
4248 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
4249 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
4250 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
4251 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
4252 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
4253 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
4254 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
4255
4256       </div>
4257       <div class="tags">
4258
4259
4260         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>.
4261
4262
4263       </div>
4264     </div>
4265     <div class="padding"></div>
4266
4267     <div class="entry">
4268       <div class="title">
4269         <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>
4270       </div>
4271       <div class="date">
4272          7th December 2008
4273       </div>
4274       <div class="body">
4275         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
4276 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
4277 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
4278 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
4279 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
4280 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
4281 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
4282 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
4283
4284 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
4285 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
4286 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
4287 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
4288 of these cards.</p>
4289
4290       </div>
4291       <div class="tags">
4292
4293
4294         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>.
4295
4296
4297       </div>
4298     </div>
4299     <div class="padding"></div>
4300
4301     <div class="entry">
4302       <div class="title">
4303         <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>
4304       </div>
4305       <div class="date">
4306         25th November 2008
4307       </div>
4308       <div class="body">
4309         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
4310 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
4311 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
4312 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
4313 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
4314 notes are available on
4315 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
4316 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
4317 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
4318 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
4319 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
4320 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
4321 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
4322 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
4323 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
4324
4325 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
4326 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
4327
4328       </div>
4329       <div class="tags">
4330
4331
4332         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>.
4333
4334
4335       </div>
4336     </div>
4337     <div class="padding"></div>
4338
4339     <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>
4340     <div id="sidebar">
4341
4342
4343
4344 <h2>Archive</h2>
4345 <ul>
4346
4347 <li>2012
4348 <ul>
4349
4350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
4351
4352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
4353
4354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
4355
4356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
4357
4358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
4359
4360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
4361
4362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (14)</a></li>
4363
4364 </ul></li>
4365
4366 <li>2011
4367 <ul>
4368
4369 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
4370
4371 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
4372
4373 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
4374
4375 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
4376
4377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
4378
4379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
4380
4381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
4382
4383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
4384
4385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
4386
4387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4388
4389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4390
4391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
4392
4393 </ul></li>
4394
4395 <li>2010
4396 <ul>
4397
4398 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
4399
4400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
4401
4402 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
4403
4404 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
4405
4406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4407
4408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
4409
4410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
4411
4412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
4413
4414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
4415
4416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
4417
4418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
4419
4420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
4421
4422 </ul></li>
4423
4424 <li>2009
4425 <ul>
4426
4427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
4428
4429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
4430
4431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
4432
4433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
4434
4435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
4436
4437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
4438
4439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
4440
4441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
4442
4443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
4444
4445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
4446
4447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
4448
4449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
4450
4451 </ul></li>
4452
4453 <li>2008
4454 <ul>
4455
4456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
4457
4458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
4459
4460 </ul></li>
4461
4462 </ul>
4463
4464
4465
4466 <h2>Tags</h2>
4467 <ul>
4468
4469  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
4470
4471  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
4472
4473  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
4474
4475  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
4476
4477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
4478
4479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
4480
4481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (55)</a></li>
4482
4483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (110)</a></li>
4484
4485  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
4486
4487  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
4488
4489  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (142)</a></li>
4490
4491  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (17)</a></li>
4492
4493  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
4494
4495  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (6)</a></li>
4496
4497  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (30)</a></li>
4498
4499  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (16)</a></li>
4500
4501  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
4502
4503  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
4504
4505  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
4506
4507  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (22)</a></li>
4508
4509  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (189)</a></li>
4510
4511  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (140)</a></li>
4512
4513  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (4)</a></li>
4514
4515  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
4516
4517  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (33)</a></li>
4518
4519  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (48)</a></li>
4520
4521  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
4522
4523  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
4524
4525  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
4526
4527  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
4528
4529  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
4530
4531  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
4532
4533  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
4534
4535  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
4536
4537  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
4538
4539  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (1)</a></li>
4540
4541  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (35)</a></li>
4542
4543  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
4544
4545  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (4)</a></li>
4546
4547  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (10)</a></li>
4548
4549  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (6)</a></li>
4550
4551  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (32)</a></li>
4552
4553  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
4554
4555  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (25)</a></li>
4556
4557 </ul>
4558
4559
4560     </div>
4561     <p style="text-align: right">
4562  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
4563 </p>
4564
4565   </body>
4566 </html>