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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         22nd January 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Yesterday, I
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
  33 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
  34 pluggable hardware devices, which I
  35 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
  36 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
  37 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
  38 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
  39 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
  40 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
  41 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
  42 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
  43 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
  44 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
  45
  46 <pre>
  47 git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/isenkram.git
  48 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage
  49 </pre>
  50
  51 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
  52 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
  53 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
  54 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
  55
  56 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
  57 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
  58 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
  59 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
  60 word.</p>
  61
  62       </div>
  63       <div class="tags">
  64
  65
  66         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>.
  67
  68
  69       </div>
  70     </div>
  71     <div class="padding"></div>
  72
  73     <div class="entry">
  74       <div class="title">
  75         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="date">
  78         21st January 2013
  79       </div>
  80       <div class="body">
  81         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
  82 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
  83 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
  84 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
  85 it, fetch the
  86 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
  87 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
  88 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
  89 autostart script.</p>
  90
  91 <p>The design is simple:</p>
  92
  93 <ul>
  94
  95 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
  96 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
  97
  98 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
  99 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 100 initially did.</li>
 101
 102 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 103 the APT database, a database
 104 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 105 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 106
 107 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 108 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 109 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 110 package or packages.</li>
 111
 112 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 113 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 114
 115 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 116 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 117
 118 </ul>
 119
 120 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 121 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 122 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 123 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 124
 125 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 126 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 127 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 128 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 129 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 130
 131 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 132 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 133 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 134 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 135 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 136 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 137 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 138 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 139
 140 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 141 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 142 '<tt>svn checkout
 143 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 144 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 145 devscripts package.</p>
 146
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="tags">
 149
 150
 151         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>.
 152
 153
 154       </div>
 155     </div>
 156     <div class="padding"></div>
 157
 158     <div class="entry">
 159       <div class="title">
 160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
 161       </div>
 162       <div class="date">
 163         19th January 2013
 164       </div>
 165       <div class="body">
 166         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 167 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 168 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 169 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 170 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 171 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 172 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 173 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 174 not a durable solution.
 175
 176 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 177 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 178
 179 <ul>
 180
 181 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 182   than A4).</li>
 183 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 184 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 185 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 186 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 187 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 188 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 189 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 190 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 191 size).</li>
 192 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 193   X.org packages.</li>
 194 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 195   the time).
 196
 197 </ul>
 198
 199 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 200 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 201 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 202 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 203 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 204 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 205 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 206 still be useful.</p>
 207
 208 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 209 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 210 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 211 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 212 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 213 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 214
 215       </div>
 216       <div class="tags">
 217
 218
 219         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>.
 220
 221
 222       </div>
 223     </div>
 224     <div class="padding"></div>
 225
 226     <div class="entry">
 227       <div class="title">
 228         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
 229       </div>
 230       <div class="date">
 231         18th January 2013
 232       </div>
 233       <div class="body">
 234         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 235 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 236 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 237 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 238 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 239 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 240 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 241
 242 <pre>
 243 #!/usr/bin/python
 244 import sys
 245 import apt
 246 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 247     cache = apt.Cache()
 248     cache.open(None)
 249     thepkgs = []
 250     for pkg in cache:
 251         version = pkg.candidate
 252         if version is None:
 253             version = pkg.installed
 254         if version is None:
 255             continue
 256         record = version.record
 257         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 258             continue
 259         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 260         for t in mime_types:
 261             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 262             if t == mimetype:
 263                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 264     return thepkgs
 265 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 266 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 267     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 268 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 269 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 270     print "  %s" %pkg
 271 </pre>
 272
 273 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 274
 275 <pre>
 276 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 277 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 278   gecko-mediaplayer
 279 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 280 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 281   browser-plugin-gnash
 282 %
 283 </pre>
 284
 285 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 286 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 287 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 288 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 289
 290 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 291 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 292 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 293 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 294 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 295 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 296
 297       </div>
 298       <div class="tags">
 299
 300
 301         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>.
 302
 303
 304       </div>
 305     </div>
 306     <div class="padding"></div>
 307
 308     <div class="entry">
 309       <div class="title">
 310         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
 311       </div>
 312       <div class="date">
 313         16th January 2013
 314       </div>
 315       <div class="body">
 316         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 317 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 318 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 319 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 320 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 321 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 322 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 323 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 324
 325 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 326 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 327 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 328 can be found on the
 329 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 330 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 331 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 332 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 333 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 334
 335 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 336
 337 <pre>
 338   count MIME type
 339   ----- -----------------------
 340      32 text/plain
 341      30 audio/mpeg
 342      29 image/png
 343      28 image/jpeg
 344      27 application/ogg
 345      26 audio/x-mp3
 346      25 image/tiff
 347      25 image/gif
 348      22 image/bmp
 349      22 audio/x-wav
 350      20 audio/x-flac
 351      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 352      18 video/x-ms-asf
 353      18 audio/x-musepack
 354      18 audio/x-mpeg
 355      18 application/x-ogg
 356      17 video/mpeg
 357      17 audio/x-scpls
 358      17 audio/ogg
 359      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 360 </pre>
 361
 362 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 363
 364 <pre>
 365   count MIME type
 366   ----- -----------------------
 367      33 text/plain
 368      32 image/png
 369      32 image/jpeg
 370      29 audio/mpeg
 371      27 image/gif
 372      26 image/tiff
 373      26 application/ogg
 374      25 audio/x-mp3
 375      22 image/bmp
 376      21 audio/x-wav
 377      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 378      19 audio/x-mpeg
 379      18 video/mpeg
 380      18 audio/x-scpls
 381      18 audio/x-flac
 382      18 application/x-ogg
 383      17 video/x-ms-asf
 384      17 text/html
 385      17 audio/x-musepack
 386      16 image/x-xbitmap
 387 </pre>
 388
 389 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 390
 391 <pre>
 392   count MIME type
 393   ----- -----------------------
 394      31 text/plain
 395      31 image/png
 396      31 image/jpeg
 397      29 audio/mpeg
 398      28 application/ogg
 399      27 image/gif
 400      26 image/tiff
 401      26 audio/x-mp3
 402      23 audio/x-wav
 403      22 image/bmp
 404      21 audio/x-flac
 405      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 406      19 audio/x-mpeg
 407      18 video/x-ms-asf
 408      18 video/mpeg
 409      18 audio/x-scpls
 410      18 application/x-ogg
 411      17 audio/x-musepack
 412      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 413      16 video/x-msvideo
 414 </pre>
 415
 416 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 417 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 418 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 419 issues.</p>
 420
 421 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 422 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
 423
 424       </div>
 425       <div class="tags">
 426
 427
 428         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>.
 429
 430
 431       </div>
 432     </div>
 433     <div class="padding"></div>
 434
 435     <div class="entry">
 436       <div class="title">
 437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
 438       </div>
 439       <div class="date">
 440         15th January 2013
 441       </div>
 442       <div class="body">
 443         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 444 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 445 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 446 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 447 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 448 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 449 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 450 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 451 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 452 packages.</p>
 453
 454 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 455 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 456 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 457 modalias.</p>
 458
 459 <p><blockquote>
 460 Package: package-name
 461 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 462 </blockquote></p>
 463
 464 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 465 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 466
 467 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 468 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 469
 470 <p><blockquote>
 471 Package: cheese
 472 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 473 </blockquote></p>
 474
 475 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 476 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 477
 478 <p><blockquote>
 479 Package: pcmciautils
 480 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 481 </blockquote></p>
 482
 483 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 484 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 485
 486 <p><blockquote>
 487 Package: colorhug-client
 488 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 489 </blockquote></p>
 490
 491 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 492 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 493 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 494
 495 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 496 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 497 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 498 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 499 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 500 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 501 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 502 Raring.</p>
 503
 504 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 505 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 506 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 507 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 508 try the
 509 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 510 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 511 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 512 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 513
 514 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 515 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 516
 517 <p><blockquote>
 518 % ./hw-support-lookup
 519 <br>yubikey-personalization
 520 <br>%
 521 </blockquote></p>
 522
 523 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 524 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 525
 526 <p><blockquote>
 527 % ./hw-support-lookup
 528 <br>pcmciautils
 529 <br>%
 530 </blockquote></p>
 531
 532 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 533 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 534 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 535
 536 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 537 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 538 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 539 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 540 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 541 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 542 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 543 see if it work.</p>
 544
 545 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 546 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 547 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 548 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 549
 550       </div>
 551       <div class="tags">
 552
 553
 554         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>.
 555
 556
 557       </div>
 558     </div>
 559     <div class="padding"></div>
 560
 561     <div class="entry">
 562       <div class="title">
 563         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
 564       </div>
 565       <div class="date">
 566         14th January 2013
 567       </div>
 568       <div class="body">
 569         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 570 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 571 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 572 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 573 in
 574 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 575 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 576
 577 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 578
 579 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 580 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 581 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 582 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
 583 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
 584 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
 585
 586 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 587 this shell script:</p>
 588
 589 <pre>
 590 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 591 </pre>
 592
 593 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 594 using modinfo:</p>
 595
 596 <pre>
 597 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 598 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 599 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 600 %
 601 </pre>
 602
 603 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 604
 605 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 606 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 607
 608 <p><blockquote>
 609 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 610 </blockquote></p>
 611
 612 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 613
 614 <pre>
 615  v   00008086  (vendor)
 616  d   00002770  (device)
 617  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 618  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 619  bc  06        (bus class)
 620  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 621  i   00        (interface)
 622 </pre>
 623
 624 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 625 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 626 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 627 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 628
 629 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 630 means.</p>
 631
 632 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 633
 634 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 635 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 636
 637 <p><blockquote>
 638 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 639 </blockquote></p>
 640
 641 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 642
 643 <pre>
 644  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 645  p    0001  (device product)
 646  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 647  dc     09  (device class)
 648  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 649  dp     00  (device protocol)
 650  ic     09  (interface class)
 651  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 652  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 653 </pre>
 654
 655 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 656 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 657 these alias entries show up:</p>
 658
 659 <p><blockquote>
 660 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 661 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 662 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 663 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 664 </blockquote></p>
 665
 666 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 667 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 668 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 669
 670 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 671
 672 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 673 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 674
 675 <p><blockquote>
 676 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 677 </blockquote></p>
 678
 679 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 680
 681 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 682
 683 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 684 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 685 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 686
 687 <p><blockquote>
 688 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 689 </blockquote></p>
 690
 691 <p>The values present are</p>
 692
 693 <pre>
 694  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 695  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 696  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 697  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 698  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 699  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 700  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 701  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 702  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 703  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 704  ct   10             (chassis type)
 705  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 706 </pre>
 707
 708 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 709 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 710
 711 <pre>
 712   3 Desktop
 713   4 Low Profile Desktop
 714   5 Pizza Box
 715   6 Mini Tower
 716   7 Tower
 717   8 Portable
 718   9 Laptop
 719  10 Notebook
 720  11 Hand Held
 721  12 Docking Station
 722  13 All In One
 723  14 Sub Notebook
 724  15 Space-saving
 725  16 Lunch Box
 726  17 Main Server Chassis
 727  18 Expansion Chassis
 728  19 Sub Chassis
 729  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 730  21 Peripheral Chassis
 731  22 RAID Chassis
 732  23 Rack Mount Chassis
 733  24 Sealed-case PC
 734  25 Multi-system
 735  26 CompactPCI
 736  27 AdvancedTCA
 737  28 Blade
 738  29 Blade Enclosing
 739 </pre>
 740
 741 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
 742 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
 743 claim it is a desktop.</p>
 744
 745 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
 746
 747 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
 748 test machine:</p>
 749
 750 <p><blockquote>
 751 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
 752 </blockquote></p>
 753
 754 <p>The values present are</p>
 755
 756 <pre>
 757   ty  01  (type)
 758   pr  00  (prototype)
 759   id  00  (id)
 760   ex  00  (extra)
 761 </pre>
 762
 763 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
 764 the valid values are.</p>
 765
 766 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
 767
 768 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
 769 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
 770 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
 771 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
 772 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
 773 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
 774 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
 775
 776 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
 777
 778 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
 779 one can use the following shell script:</p>
 780
 781 <pre>
 782   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
 783     echo "$id" ; \
 784     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
 785   done
 786 </pre>
 787
 788 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
 789 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
 790
 791 <pre>
 792   acpi:ACPI0003:
 793     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
 794   acpi:device:
 795   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
 796   acpi:IBM0068:
 797     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
 798     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
 799     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
 800     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
 801   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 802     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
 803     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
 804     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
 805   [...]
 806 </pre>
 807
 808 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 809 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 810 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 811 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 812
 813 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
 814 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
 815 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
 816
 817       </div>
 818       <div class="tags">
 819
 820
 821         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>.
 822
 823
 824       </div>
 825     </div>
 826     <div class="padding"></div>
 827
 828     <div class="entry">
 829       <div class="title">
 830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
 831       </div>
 832       <div class="date">
 833         10th January 2013
 834       </div>
 835       <div class="body">
 836         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
 837 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
 838 Launcher and updated the Debian package
 839 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
 840 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
 841 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
 842 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
 843 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
 844 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
 845 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
 846 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
 847 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
 848 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
 849 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
 850 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
 851 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
 852 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
 853 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
 854
 855       </div>
 856       <div class="tags">
 857
 858
 859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 860
 861
 862       </div>
 863     </div>
 864     <div class="padding"></div>
 865
 866     <div class="entry">
 867       <div class="title">
 868         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
 869       </div>
 870       <div class="date">
 871          9th January 2013
 872       </div>
 873       <div class="body">
 874         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
 875 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
 876 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
 877 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
 878 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
 879 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
 880 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
 881 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
 882 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
 883 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
 884 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
 885
 886 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
 887 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
 888 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
 889 simple:
 890
 891 <ul>
 892
 893 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
 894   starting when a user log in.</li>
 895
 896 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
 897   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
 898
 899 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
 900   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
 901   packages.</li>
 902
 903 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
 904   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
 905
 906 </ul>
 907
 908 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
 909 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
 910 discover database to find packages and
 911 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
 912 packages.</p>
 913
 914 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
 915 draft package is now checked into
 916 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 917 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
 918 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
 919 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
 920 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
 921 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
 922 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
 923 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
 924 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
 925 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
 926 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
 927 because of the freeze).</p>
 928
 929 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
 930 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
 931 inserted):</p>
 932
 933 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
 934
 935 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
 936 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
 937 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
 938
 939 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
 940 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
 941 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
 942 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
 943 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
 944 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
 945 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
 946
 947 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
 948 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
 949 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
 950 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
 951 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
 952 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
 953 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
 954 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
 955 not be installed?</p>
 956
 957 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
 958 please send me an email. :)</p>
 959
 960       </div>
 961       <div class="tags">
 962
 963
 964         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>.
 965
 966
 967       </div>
 968     </div>
 969     <div class="padding"></div>
 970
 971     <div class="entry">
 972       <div class="title">
 973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
 974       </div>
 975       <div class="date">
 976          2nd January 2013
 977       </div>
 978       <div class="body">
 979         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
 980 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
 981 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
 982 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
 983 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
 984 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
 985 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
 986 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
 987 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
 988 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
 989
 990 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
 991 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
 992 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 993
 994       </div>
 995       <div class="tags">
 996
 997
 998         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 999
1000
1001       </div>
1002     </div>
1003     <div class="padding"></div>
1004
1005     <div class="entry">
1006       <div class="title">
1007         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
1008       </div>
1009       <div class="date">
1010         25th December 2012
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="body">
1013         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1014 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1015
1016 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1017 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1018 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1019 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1020 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1021 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1022 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1023 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1024 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1025 name.</p>
1026
1027 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1028 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1029 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1030
1031 <blockquote><pre>
1032 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1033 cd bitcoin
1034 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1035 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1036 </pre></blockquote>
1037
1038 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1039 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1040 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1041 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1042 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1043 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1044 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1045 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1046 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1047
1048 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1049 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1050 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1051
1052       </div>
1053       <div class="tags">
1054
1055
1056         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>.
1057
1058
1059       </div>
1060     </div>
1061     <div class="padding"></div>
1062
1063     <div class="entry">
1064       <div class="title">
1065         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="date">
1068         21st December 2012
1069       </div>
1070       <div class="body">
1071         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1072 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1073 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1074 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1075 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1076 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1077 is now maintained by a
1078 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1079 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1080 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1081 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1082 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1083 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1084 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1085 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1086 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1087 Corallo in a
1088 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1089 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1090 Debian package.</p>
1091
1092 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1093 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1094 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1095 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1096 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1097 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1098 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1099 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1100 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1101 new version to unstable.
1102
1103 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1104 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1105 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1106 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1107 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1108 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1109 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1110 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1111 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1112 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1113 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1114 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1115 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1116 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1117 have not tested them.</p>
1118
1119 <p>My
1120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1121 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1122 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1123 years ago, as can be
1124 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1125 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1126 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1127 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1128 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1129 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1130 the same address as last time,
1131 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1132
1133       </div>
1134       <div class="tags">
1135
1136
1137         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>.
1138
1139
1140       </div>
1141     </div>
1142     <div class="padding"></div>
1143
1144     <div class="entry">
1145       <div class="title">
1146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1147       </div>
1148       <div class="date">
1149          7th September 2012
1150       </div>
1151       <div class="body">
1152         <p>As I
1153 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
1154 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
1155 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
1156 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
1157 repository for the project</a>.</p>
1158
1159 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
1160 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1161 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1162 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
1163
1164 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1165 PostScript formats at
1166 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
1167 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
1168
1169       </div>
1170       <div class="tags">
1171
1172
1173         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>.
1174
1175
1176       </div>
1177     </div>
1178     <div class="padding"></div>
1179
1180     <div class="entry">
1181       <div class="title">
1182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
1183       </div>
1184       <div class="date">
1185         16th August 2012
1186       </div>
1187       <div class="body">
1188         <p>I dag fyller
1189 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
1190 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
1191 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
1192
1193       </div>
1194       <div class="tags">
1195
1196
1197         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>.
1198
1199
1200       </div>
1201     </div>
1202     <div class="padding"></div>
1203
1204     <div class="entry">
1205       <div class="title">
1206         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
1207       </div>
1208       <div class="date">
1209         24th June 2012
1210       </div>
1211       <div class="body">
1212         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
1213 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
1214 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
1215 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
1216 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
1217 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
1218 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
1219 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
1220 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
1221 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
1222 missing in my book.</p>
1223
1224 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
1225 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
1226 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
1227 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
1228 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
1229 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
1230 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
1231
1232       </div>
1233       <div class="tags">
1234
1235
1236         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>.
1237
1238
1239       </div>
1240     </div>
1241     <div class="padding"></div>
1242
1243     <div class="entry">
1244       <div class="title">
1245         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
1246       </div>
1247       <div class="date">
1248         21st November 2011
1249       </div>
1250       <div class="body">
1251         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
1252 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
1253 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
1254 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
1255 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
1256 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
1257 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
1258 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
1259 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
1260 the tools to do so.</p>
1261
1262 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
1263 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
1264 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
1265 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
1266
1267 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
1268 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
1269 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
1270 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
1271 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
1272 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
1273 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
1274 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
1275
1276 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
1277 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
1278 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
1279
1280 <p><pre>
1281 #!/usr/bin/perl
1282 use strict;
1283 use warnings;
1284 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
1285 BEGIN {
1286     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
1287     my %rhelmodules = (
1288         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
1289         );
1290     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
1291         eval "use $module;";
1292         if ($@) {
1293             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
1294             system("yum install -y $pkg");
1295             eval "use $module;";
1296         }
1297     }
1298 }
1299 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
1300
1301 upgrade_dell();
1302
1303 exit 0;
1304
1305 sub run_firmware_script {
1306     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
1307     unless ($script) {
1308         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
1309         exit 1
1310     }
1311     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
1312
1313     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
1314         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
1315     } else {
1316         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
1317     }
1318 }
1319
1320 sub run_firmware_scripts {
1321     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
1322     # Run firmware packages
1323     for my $dir (@dirs) {
1324         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
1325         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
1326         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
1327             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
1328             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
1329         }
1330         closedir $dh;
1331     }
1332 }
1333
1334 sub download {
1335     my $url = shift;
1336     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
1337     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
1338 }
1339
1340 sub upgrade_dell {
1341     my @dirs;
1342     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1343     chomp $product;
1344
1345     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
1346
1347         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
1348         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
1349
1350         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
1351             CLEANUP => 1
1352             );
1353         chdir($tmpdir);
1354         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
1355         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
1356         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
1357         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
1358         my $fwopts = "-q";
1359         if (@paths) {
1360             for my $url (@paths) {
1361                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
1362             }
1363             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
1364         } else {
1365             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1366             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1367         }
1368         chdir('/');
1369     } else {
1370         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
1371         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
1372     }
1373 }
1374
1375 sub fetch_dell_fw {
1376     my $path = shift;
1377     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
1378     download($url);
1379 }
1380
1381 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
1382 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
1383 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
1384 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
1385     my $filename = shift;
1386
1387     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
1388     chomp $product;
1389     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
1390
1391     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
1392
1393     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
1394     my @paths;
1395     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
1396         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
1397         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
1398         my $oscode;
1399         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
1400             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
1401         } else {
1402             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
1403         }
1404         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
1405         {
1406             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
1407         }
1408     }
1409     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
1410         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
1411
1412         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
1413         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
1414
1415         my $cpath = $component->{path};
1416         for my $path (@paths) {
1417             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
1418                 push(@paths, $cpath);
1419             }
1420         }
1421     }
1422     return @paths;
1423 }
1424 </pre>
1425
1426 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
1427 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
1428 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
1429 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
1430 outdated.</p>
1431
1432       </div>
1433       <div class="tags">
1434
1435
1436         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>.
1437
1438
1439       </div>
1440     </div>
1441     <div class="padding"></div>
1442
1443     <div class="entry">
1444       <div class="title">
1445         <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>
1446       </div>
1447       <div class="date">
1448          4th August 2011
1449       </div>
1450       <div class="body">
1451         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
1452 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
1453 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
1454 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
1455 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
1456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
1457 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
1458 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
1459 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
1460
1461 <p><blockquote>
1462 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
1463 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
1464 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
1465 </blockquote></p>
1466
1467 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
1468 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
1469 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
1470 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
1471 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
1472 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
1473 hard to explain.</p>
1474
1475 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
1476 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
1477 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
1478 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
1479 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
1480 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
1481 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
1482 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
1483 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
1484 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
1485 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
1486 mode).</p>
1487
1488 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
1489 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
1490 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
1491 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
1492 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
1493 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
1494 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
1495 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
1496 after visiting single user mode.</p>
1497
1498 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
1499 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
1500 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
1501 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
1502 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
1503 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
1504 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
1505 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
1506
1507 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
1508 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
1509 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
1510
1511       </div>
1512       <div class="tags">
1513
1514
1515         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>.
1516
1517
1518       </div>
1519     </div>
1520     <div class="padding"></div>
1521
1522     <div class="entry">
1523       <div class="title">
1524         <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>
1525       </div>
1526       <div class="date">
1527         30th July 2011
1528       </div>
1529       <div class="body">
1530         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
1531 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
1532 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
1533 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
1534 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
1535 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
1536 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
1537 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
1538 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
1539 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
1540 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
1541 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
1542 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
1543
1544 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
1545 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
1546 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
1547 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
1548 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
1549 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
1550 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
1551 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
1552 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
1553
1554 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
1555 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
1556 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
1557 is presented.</p>
1558
1559 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
1560 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
1561 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
1562 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
1563 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
1564 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
1565 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
1566 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
1567 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
1568 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
1569 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
1570 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
1571 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
1572 find time to push this forward.</p>
1573
1574       </div>
1575       <div class="tags">
1576
1577
1578         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>.
1579
1580
1581       </div>
1582     </div>
1583     <div class="padding"></div>
1584
1585     <div class="entry">
1586       <div class="title">
1587         <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>
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="date">
1590         29th July 2011
1591       </div>
1592       <div class="body">
1593         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
1594 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
1595 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
1596 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
1597 issues.</p>
1598
1599 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
1600 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
1601 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
1602
1603 <ol>
1604
1605 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
1606 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
1607 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
1608 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
1609 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
1610 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
1611 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
1612 Debian.</li>
1613
1614 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
1615 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
1616 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
1617 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
1618 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
1619 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
1620 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
1621 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
1622 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
1623 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
1624 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
1625 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
1626 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
1627
1628 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
1629 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
1630 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
1631 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
1632 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
1633 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
1634 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
1635 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
1636 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
1637 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
1638
1639 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
1640 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
1641 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
1642 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
1643 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
1644 latter behaviour.</li>
1645
1646 </ol>
1647
1648 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
1649 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
1650 it do not matter much.</p>
1651
1652 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
1653 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
1654 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
1655
1656       </div>
1657       <div class="tags">
1658
1659
1660         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>.
1661
1662
1663       </div>
1664     </div>
1665     <div class="padding"></div>
1666
1667     <div class="entry">
1668       <div class="title">
1669         <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>
1670       </div>
1671       <div class="date">
1672         26th July 2011
1673       </div>
1674       <div class="body">
1675         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
1676 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
1677 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
1678 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
1679 security support for a few years.</p>
1680
1681 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
1682 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
1683 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
1684 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
1685 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
1686 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
1687 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
1688 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
1689 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
1690 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
1691 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
1692 easier in the future.</p>
1693
1694 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
1695 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
1696 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
1697 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
1698 do not have time for.</p>
1699
1700       </div>
1701       <div class="tags">
1702
1703
1704         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>.
1705
1706
1707       </div>
1708     </div>
1709     <div class="padding"></div>
1710
1711     <div class="entry">
1712       <div class="title">
1713         <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>
1714       </div>
1715       <div class="date">
1716          3rd April 2011
1717       </div>
1718       <div class="body">
1719         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
1720 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
1721 update in English.</p>
1722
1723 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
1724 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
1725 of the British service
1726 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
1727 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
1728 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
1729 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
1730 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
1731 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
1732 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
1733 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
1734 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
1735 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
1736 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
1737 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
1738 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
1739
1740 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
1741 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
1742 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
1743 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
1744 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
1745 public infrastructure.</p>
1746
1747 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
1748 such service?</p>
1749
1750       </div>
1751       <div class="tags">
1752
1753
1754         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>.
1755
1756
1757       </div>
1758     </div>
1759     <div class="padding"></div>
1760
1761     <div class="entry">
1762       <div class="title">
1763         <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>
1764       </div>
1765       <div class="date">
1766         28th January 2011
1767       </div>
1768       <div class="body">
1769         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
1770 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
1771 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
1772 available on the Internet, and check our locally
1773 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
1774 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
1775 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
1776 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
1777 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
1778 out which security holes were present in our free software
1779 collection.</p>
1780
1781 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
1782 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
1783 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
1784 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
1785 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
1786 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
1787 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
1788 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
1789 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
1790 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
1791 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
1792 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
1793 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
1794 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
1795 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
1796 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
1797
1798 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
1799 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
1800 check out, one could look up
1801 <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
1802 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
1803 The most recent one is
1804 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
1805 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
1806 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
1807
1808 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
1809 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
1810 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
1811 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
1812 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
1813 security issues out.</p>
1814
1815 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
1816 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
1817 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
1818 RHEL is providing
1819 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
1820 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
1821 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
1822
1823 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
1824 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
1825 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
1826 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
1827 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
1828 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
1829 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
1830 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
1831 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
1832 established soon.</p>
1833
1834 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
1835 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
1836 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
1837 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
1838 for their packages.</p>
1839
1840       </div>
1841       <div class="tags">
1842
1843
1844         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1845
1846
1847       </div>
1848     </div>
1849     <div class="padding"></div>
1850
1851     <div class="entry">
1852       <div class="title">
1853         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
1854       </div>
1855       <div class="date">
1856         23rd January 2011
1857       </div>
1858       <div class="body">
1859         <p>In the
1860 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
1861 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
1862 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
1863 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
1864 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
1865 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
1866 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
1867 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
1868 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
1869 one of my machines like this:</p>
1870
1871 <pre>
1872 loaded modules:
1873 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
1874 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
1875 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
1876 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
1877 10de:03ec pata_amd
1878 10de:03f6 sata_nv
1879 1022:1103 k8temp
1880 109e:036e bttv
1881 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
1882 11ab:4364 sky2
1883 </pre>
1884
1885 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
1886 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
1887
1888 <pre>
1889 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
1890     echo loaded pci modules:
1891     (
1892         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
1893         for address in * ; do
1894             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1895                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1896                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1897                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1898                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
1899                     echo "$id $module"
1900                 fi
1901             fi
1902         done
1903     )
1904     echo
1905 fi
1906 </pre>
1907
1908 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
1909 mappings:</p>
1910
1911 <pre>
1912 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
1913     echo loaded usb modules:
1914     (
1915         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
1916         for address in * ; do
1917             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
1918                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
1919                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
1920                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
1921                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
1922                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
1923                         echo "$id $module"
1924                     fi
1925                 fi
1926             fi
1927         done
1928     )
1929     echo
1930 fi
1931 </pre>
1932
1933 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
1934 well.</p>
1935
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="tags">
1938
1939
1940         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>.
1941
1942
1943       </div>
1944     </div>
1945     <div class="padding"></div>
1946
1947     <div class="entry">
1948       <div class="title">
1949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="date">
1952         22nd December 2010
1953       </div>
1954       <div class="body">
1955         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
1956 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
1957 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
1958 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
1959 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
1960 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
1961 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
1962 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
1963 university.</p>
1964
1965 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
1966 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
1967 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
1968 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
1969 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
1970 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
1971 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
1972 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
1973
1974 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
1975 I perform on a new model.</p>
1976
1977 <ul>
1978
1979 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
1980 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
1981 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
1982
1983 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
1984 installation, X.org is working.</li>
1985
1986 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
1987 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
1988 reported by the program.</li>
1989
1990 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
1991 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
1992 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
1993 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
1994 normally test this by playing
1995 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
1996 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
1997
1998 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
1999 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2000
2001 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2002 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2003
2004 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2005 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2006
2007 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2008 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2009 few.</li>
2010
2011 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2012 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2013 notice this.</li>
2014
2015 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2016 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2017 resume.</li>
2018
2019 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2020 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2021 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2022 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2023 not.</li>
2024
2025 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2026 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2027 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2028 existence.</li>
2029
2030 </ul>
2031
2032 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2033 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2034 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2035 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2036 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2037 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2038 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2039 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2040
2041       </div>
2042       <div class="tags">
2043
2044
2045         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>.
2046
2047
2048       </div>
2049     </div>
2050     <div class="padding"></div>
2051
2052     <div class="entry">
2053       <div class="title">
2054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2055       </div>
2056       <div class="date">
2057         11th December 2010
2058       </div>
2059       <div class="body">
2060         <p>As I continue to explore
2061 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2062 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2063 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2064
2065 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2066 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2067 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2068 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2069 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2070 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2071 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2072 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2073 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2074 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2075 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2076 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2077 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2078 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2079 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2080 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2081 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2082 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
2083 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
2084 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
2085
2086 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
2087 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
2088 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
2089 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
2090 If the Skolelinux foundation
2091 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
2092 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
2093 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
2094 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
2095 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
2096 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
2097 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
2098 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
2099
2100 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
2101 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
2102 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
2103 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
2104 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
2105 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
2106 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
2107 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
2108 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
2109 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
2110 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
2111 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
2112 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
2113 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
2114 currencies.</p>
2115
2116 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
2117 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
2118 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
2119 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
2120 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
2121 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
2122 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
2123 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
2124 BitCoins.  Check out
2125 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
2126 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
2127 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
2128 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
2129 yet.</p>
2130
2131 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
2132 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
2133 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
2134 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
2135 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
2136
2137       </div>
2138       <div class="tags">
2139
2140
2141         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>.
2142
2143
2144       </div>
2145     </div>
2146     <div class="padding"></div>
2147
2148     <div class="entry">
2149       <div class="title">
2150         <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>
2151       </div>
2152       <div class="date">
2153         10th December 2010
2154       </div>
2155       <div class="body">
2156         <p>With this weeks lawless
2157 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
2158 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
2159 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
2160 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
2161 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
2162 A blog post from
2163 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
2164 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
2165 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
2166 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
2167 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
2168 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
2169 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
2170
2171 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
2172 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
2173 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
2174 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
2175 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
2176 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
2177 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
2178 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
2179 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
2180 Debian</a> soon.</p>
2181
2182 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
2183 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
2184 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
2185 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
2186 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
2187 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
2188 you can even get
2189 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
2190 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
2191 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
2192 on the current exchange rates.</p>
2193
2194 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
2195 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
2196 donations to the address
2197 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
2198
2199       </div>
2200       <div class="tags">
2201
2202
2203         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>.
2204
2205
2206       </div>
2207     </div>
2208     <div class="padding"></div>
2209
2210     <div class="entry">
2211       <div class="title">
2212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
2213       </div>
2214       <div class="date">
2215         27th November 2010
2216       </div>
2217       <div class="body">
2218         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
2219 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
2220 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
2221 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
2222 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
2223 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
2224 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
2225 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
2226
2227 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
2228 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
2229 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
2230 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
2231 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
2232 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
2233 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
2234 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
2235 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
2236 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
2237 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
2238
2239 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
2240 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
2241 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
2242 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
2243 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
2244 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
2245 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
2246 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
2247 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
2248 what is going on.</p>
2249
2250       </div>
2251       <div class="tags">
2252
2253
2254         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>.
2255
2256
2257       </div>
2258     </div>
2259     <div class="padding"></div>
2260
2261     <div class="entry">
2262       <div class="title">
2263         <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>
2264       </div>
2265       <div class="date">
2266         22nd November 2010
2267       </div>
2268       <div class="body">
2269         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
2270 upgrade testing of the
2271 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2272 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
2273 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
2274 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
2275
2276 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2277
2278 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2279
2280 <blockquote><p>
2281   apache2.2-bin
2282   aptdaemon
2283   baobab
2284   binfmt-support
2285   browser-plugin-gnash
2286   cheese-common
2287   cli-common
2288   cups-pk-helper
2289   dmz-cursor-theme
2290   empathy
2291   empathy-common
2292   freedesktop-sound-theme
2293   freeglut3
2294   gconf-defaults-service
2295   gdm-themes
2296   gedit-plugins
2297   geoclue
2298   geoclue-hostip
2299   geoclue-localnet
2300   geoclue-manual
2301   geoclue-yahoo
2302   gnash
2303   gnash-common
2304   gnome
2305   gnome-backgrounds
2306   gnome-cards-data
2307   gnome-codec-install
2308   gnome-core
2309   gnome-desktop-environment
2310   gnome-disk-utility
2311   gnome-screenshot
2312   gnome-search-tool
2313   gnome-session-canberra
2314   gnome-system-log
2315   gnome-themes-extras
2316   gnome-themes-more
2317   gnome-user-share
2318   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2319   gstreamer0.10-tools
2320   gtk2-engines
2321   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2322   gtk2-engines-smooth
2323   hamster-applet
2324   libapache2-mod-dnssd
2325   libapr1
2326   libaprutil1
2327   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
2328   libaprutil1-ldap
2329   libart2.0-cil
2330   libboost-date-time1.42.0
2331   libboost-python1.42.0
2332   libboost-thread1.42.0
2333   libchamplain-0.4-0
2334   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
2335   libcheese-gtk18
2336   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2337   libcryptui0
2338   libdiscid0
2339   libelf1
2340   libepc-1.0-2
2341   libepc-common
2342   libepc-ui-1.0-2
2343   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2344   libfreerdp0
2345   libgconf2.0-cil
2346   libgdata-common
2347   libgdata7
2348   libgdu-gtk0
2349   libgee2
2350   libgeoclue0
2351   libgexiv2-0
2352   libgif4
2353   libglade2.0-cil
2354   libglib2.0-cil
2355   libgmime2.4-cil
2356   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2357   libgnome2.24-cil
2358   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
2359   libgpod-common
2360   libgpod4
2361   libgtk2.0-cil
2362   libgtkglext1
2363   libgtksourceview2.0-common
2364   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2365   libmono-addins0.2-cil
2366   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
2367   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2368   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
2369   libmono-posix2.0-cil
2370   libmono-security2.0-cil
2371   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2372   libmono-system2.0-cil
2373   libmtp8
2374   libmusicbrainz3-6
2375   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
2376   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
2377   libopal3.6.8
2378   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
2379   libpt2.6.7
2380   libpython2.6
2381   librpm1
2382   librpmio1
2383   libsdl1.2debian
2384   libsrtp0
2385   libssh-4
2386   libtelepathy-farsight0
2387   libtelepathy-glib0
2388   libtidy-0.99-0
2389   media-player-info
2390   mesa-utils
2391   mono-2.0-gac
2392   mono-gac
2393   mono-runtime
2394   nautilus-sendto
2395   nautilus-sendto-empathy
2396   p7zip-full
2397   pkg-config
2398   python-aptdaemon
2399   python-aptdaemon-gtk
2400   python-axiom
2401   python-beautifulsoup
2402   python-bugbuddy
2403   python-clientform
2404   python-coherence
2405   python-configobj
2406   python-crypto
2407   python-cupshelpers
2408   python-elementtree
2409   python-epsilon
2410   python-evolution
2411   python-feedparser
2412   python-gdata
2413   python-gdbm
2414   python-gst0.10
2415   python-gtkglext1
2416   python-gtksourceview2
2417   python-httplib2
2418   python-louie
2419   python-mako
2420   python-markupsafe
2421   python-mechanize
2422   python-nevow
2423   python-notify
2424   python-opengl
2425   python-openssl
2426   python-pam
2427   python-pkg-resources
2428   python-pyasn1
2429   python-pysqlite2
2430   python-rdflib
2431   python-serial
2432   python-tagpy
2433   python-twisted-bin
2434   python-twisted-conch
2435   python-twisted-core
2436   python-twisted-web
2437   python-utidylib
2438   python-webkit
2439   python-xdg
2440   python-zope.interface
2441   remmina
2442   remmina-plugin-data
2443   remmina-plugin-rdp
2444   remmina-plugin-vnc
2445   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2446   rhythmbox-plugins
2447   rpm-common
2448   rpm2cpio
2449   seahorse-plugins
2450   shotwell
2451   software-center
2452   system-config-printer-udev
2453   telepathy-gabble
2454   telepathy-mission-control-5
2455   telepathy-salut
2456   tomboy
2457   totem
2458   totem-coherence
2459   totem-mozilla
2460   totem-plugins
2461   transmission-common
2462   xdg-user-dirs
2463   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
2464   xserver-xephyr
2465 </p></blockquote>
2466
2467 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2468
2469 <blockquote><p>
2470   cheese
2471   ekiga
2472   eog
2473   epiphany-extensions
2474   evolution-exchange
2475   fast-user-switch-applet
2476   file-roller
2477   gcalctool
2478   gconf-editor
2479   gdm
2480   gedit
2481   gedit-common
2482   gnome-games
2483   gnome-games-data
2484   gnome-nettool
2485   gnome-system-tools
2486   gnome-themes
2487   gnuchess
2488   gucharmap
2489   guile-1.8-libs
2490   libavahi-ui0
2491   libdmx1
2492   libgalago3
2493   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2494   libgtksourceview2.0-0
2495   liblircclient0
2496   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
2497   libspeexdsp1
2498   libsvga1
2499   rhythmbox
2500   seahorse
2501   sound-juicer
2502   system-config-printer
2503   totem-common
2504   transmission-gtk
2505   vinagre
2506   vino
2507 </p></blockquote>
2508
2509 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2510
2511 <blockquote><p>
2512   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2513 </p></blockquote>
2514
2515 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2516
2517 <blockquote><p>
2518 [nothing]
2519 </p></blockquote>
2520
2521 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2522
2523 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2524
2525 <blockquote><p>
2526   ksmserver
2527 </p></blockquote>
2528
2529 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2530
2531 <blockquote><p>
2532   kwin
2533   network-manager-kde
2534 </p></blockquote>
2535
2536 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2537
2538 <blockquote><p>
2539   arts
2540   dolphin
2541   freespacenotifier
2542   google-gadgets-gst
2543   google-gadgets-xul
2544   kappfinder
2545   kcalc
2546   kcharselect
2547   kde-core
2548   kde-plasma-desktop
2549   kde-standard
2550   kde-window-manager
2551   kdeartwork
2552   kdeartwork-emoticons
2553   kdeartwork-style
2554   kdeartwork-theme-icon
2555   kdebase
2556   kdebase-apps
2557   kdebase-workspace
2558   kdebase-workspace-bin
2559   kdebase-workspace-data
2560   kdeeject
2561   kdelibs
2562   kdeplasma-addons
2563   kdeutils
2564   kdewallpapers
2565   kdf
2566   kfloppy
2567   kgpg
2568   khelpcenter4
2569   kinfocenter
2570   konq-plugins-l10n
2571   konqueror-nsplugins
2572   kscreensaver
2573   kscreensaver-xsavers
2574   ktimer
2575   kwrite
2576   libgle3
2577   libkde4-ruby1.8
2578   libkonq5
2579   libkonq5-templates
2580   libnetpbm10
2581   libplasma-ruby
2582   libplasma-ruby1.8
2583   libqt4-ruby1.8
2584   marble-data
2585   marble-plugins
2586   netpbm
2587   nuvola-icon-theme
2588   plasma-dataengines-workspace
2589   plasma-desktop
2590   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
2591   plasma-runners-addons
2592   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
2593   plasma-scriptengine-python
2594   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
2595   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
2596   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
2597   plasma-scriptengines
2598   plasma-wallpapers-addons
2599   plasma-widget-folderview
2600   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
2601   ruby
2602   sweeper
2603   update-notifier-kde
2604   xscreensaver-data-extra
2605   xscreensaver-gl
2606   xscreensaver-gl-extra
2607   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
2608 </p></blockquote>
2609
2610 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2611
2612 <blockquote><p>
2613   ark
2614   google-gadgets-common
2615   google-gadgets-qt
2616   htdig
2617   kate
2618   kdebase-bin
2619   kdebase-data
2620   kdepasswd
2621   kfind
2622   klipper
2623   konq-plugins
2624   konqueror
2625   ksysguard
2626   ksysguardd
2627   libarchive1
2628   libcln6
2629   libeet1
2630   libeina-svn-06
2631   libggadget-1.0-0b
2632   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
2633   libgps19
2634   libkdecorations4
2635   libkephal4
2636   libkonq4
2637   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
2638   libkscreensaver5
2639   libksgrd4
2640   libksignalplotter4
2641   libkunitconversion4
2642   libkwineffects1a
2643   libmarblewidget4
2644   libntrack-qt4-1
2645   libntrack0
2646   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
2647   libplasmaclock4a
2648   libplasmagenericshell4
2649   libprocesscore4a
2650   libprocessui4a
2651   libqalculate5
2652   libqedje0a
2653   libqtruby4shared2
2654   libqzion0a
2655   libruby1.8
2656   libscim8c2a
2657   libsmokekdecore4-3
2658   libsmokekdeui4-3
2659   libsmokekfile3
2660   libsmokekhtml3
2661   libsmokekio3
2662   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
2663   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
2664   libsmokekparts3
2665   libsmokektexteditor3
2666   libsmokekutils3
2667   libsmokenepomuk3
2668   libsmokephonon3
2669   libsmokeplasma3
2670   libsmokeqtcore4-3
2671   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
2672   libsmokeqtgui4-3
2673   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
2674   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
2675   libsmokeqtscript4-3
2676   libsmokeqtsql4-3
2677   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
2678   libsmokeqttest4-3
2679   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
2680   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
2681   libsmokeqtxml4-3
2682   libsmokesolid3
2683   libsmokesoprano3
2684   libtaskmanager4a
2685   libtidy-0.99-0
2686   libweather-ion4a
2687   libxklavier16
2688   libxxf86misc1
2689   okteta
2690   oxygencursors
2691   plasma-dataengines-addons
2692   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
2693   plasma-widget-lancelot
2694   plasma-widgets-addons
2695   plasma-widgets-workspace
2696   polkit-kde-1
2697   ruby1.8
2698   systemsettings
2699   update-notifier-common
2700 </p></blockquote>
2701
2702 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
2703 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
2704 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
2705 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
2706
2707       </div>
2708       <div class="tags">
2709
2710
2711         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>.
2712
2713
2714       </div>
2715     </div>
2716     <div class="padding"></div>
2717
2718     <div class="entry">
2719       <div class="title">
2720         <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>
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="date">
2723         22nd November 2010
2724       </div>
2725       <div class="body">
2726         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
2727 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
2728 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
2729 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
2730 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
2731 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
2732 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
2733 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
2734 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
2735
2736 <p>I found
2737 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
2738 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
2739 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
2740 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
2741 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
2742 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
2743
2744 <pre>
2745 #!/bin/sh
2746
2747 # Based on
2748 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
2749
2750 set -e
2751 set -x
2752
2753 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
2754     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
2755     exit 1
2756 else
2757     host="$1"
2758 fi
2759
2760 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
2761     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
2762     exit 1
2763 fi
2764
2765 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
2766 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2767 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
2768 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
2769
2770 img=$host.img
2771 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
2772 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
2773
2774 parted $img mklabel msdos
2775 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
2776 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
2777 parted $img set 1 boot on
2778
2779 modprobe dm-mod
2780 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
2781 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
2782
2783 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
2784 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
2785 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
2786
2787 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
2788 losetup -d /dev/loop0
2789 </pre>
2790
2791 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
2792 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
2793
2794 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
2795 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
2796 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
2797 seem to work just fine.</p>
2798
2799       </div>
2800       <div class="tags">
2801
2802
2803         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>.
2804
2805
2806       </div>
2807     </div>
2808     <div class="padding"></div>
2809
2810     <div class="entry">
2811       <div class="title">
2812         <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>
2813       </div>
2814       <div class="date">
2815         20th November 2010
2816       </div>
2817       <div class="body">
2818         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
2819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
2820 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
2821 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
2822
2823 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
2824 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
2825 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
2826
2827 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
2828
2829 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2830
2831 <blockquote><p>
2832   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
2833   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
2834   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
2835   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
2836   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
2837   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
2838   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
2839   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
2840   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
2841   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
2842   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
2843   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
2844   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
2845   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
2846   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
2847   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
2848   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
2849   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
2850   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
2851   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
2852   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
2853   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
2854   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
2855   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
2856   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
2857   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
2858   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
2859   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
2860   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
2861   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
2862   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
2863   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
2864   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
2865   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
2866   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
2867   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
2868   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
2869   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
2870   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
2871   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
2872   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
2873   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
2874   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
2875   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
2876   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
2877   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
2878   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
2879   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
2880   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
2881   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
2882   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
2883   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
2884   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
2885   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
2886   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
2887   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
2888   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
2889   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
2890   zip
2891 </p></blockquote>
2892
2893 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
2894
2895 <blockquote><p>
2896   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
2897   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
2898   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
2899   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
2900   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
2901   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
2902   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
2903   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
2904   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
2905   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
2906   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
2907   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
2908   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
2909   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
2910   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
2911   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
2912   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
2913   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
2914   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
2915   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
2916   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
2917   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
2918   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
2919   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
2920   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
2921   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
2922   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
2923   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
2924   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
2925 </p></blockquote>
2926
2927 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
2928
2929 <blockquote><p>
2930   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
2931 </p></blockquote>
2932
2933 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
2934
2935 <blockquote><p>
2936 [nothing]
2937 </p></blockquote>
2938
2939 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
2940
2941 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
2942
2943 <blockquote><p>
2944   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
2945   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
2946   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
2947   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
2948   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
2949   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
2950   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
2951   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
2952   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
2953   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
2954   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
2955   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
2956   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
2957   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
2958   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
2959   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
2960   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
2961   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
2962   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
2963   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
2964   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
2965   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
2966   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
2967   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
2968   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
2969   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
2970   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
2971   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
2972   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
2973   ttf-sazanami-gothic
2974 </p></blockquote>
2975
2976 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
2977
2978 <blockquote><p>
2979   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
2980   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
2981   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
2982   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
2983   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
2984   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
2985   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
2986   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
2987   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
2988   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
2989   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
2990   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
2991   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
2992   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
2993   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
2994   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
2995   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
2996   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
2997   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
2998   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
2999   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3000   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3001   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3002   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3003   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3004   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3005   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3006   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3007   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3008   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3009   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3010   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3011   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3012 </p></blockquote>
3013
3014 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3015
3016 <blockquote><p>
3017   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3018   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3019   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3020   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3021   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3022   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3023   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3024 </p></blockquote>
3025
3026 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3027
3028 <blockquote><p>
3029   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3030 </p></blockquote>
3031
3032       </div>
3033       <div class="tags">
3034
3035
3036         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>.
3037
3038
3039       </div>
3040     </div>
3041     <div class="padding"></div>
3042
3043     <div class="entry">
3044       <div class="title">
3045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3046       </div>
3047       <div class="date">
3048         20th November 2010
3049       </div>
3050       <div class="body">
3051         <p>Answering
3052 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3053 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3054 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3055 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3056 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3057 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3058 releases out more often.</p>
3059
3060 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3061 I have considered setting up a <a
3062 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3063 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3064 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3065 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3066 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3067 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3068 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3069 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3070 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3071 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3072 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3073 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3074
3075       </div>
3076       <div class="tags">
3077
3078
3079         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>.
3080
3081
3082       </div>
3083     </div>
3084     <div class="padding"></div>
3085
3086     <div class="entry">
3087       <div class="title">
3088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
3089       </div>
3090       <div class="date">
3091          9th November 2010
3092       </div>
3093       <div class="body">
3094         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
3095
3096 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
3097 3D linked in from
3098 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
3099 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
3100
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="tags">
3103
3104
3105         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>.
3106
3107
3108       </div>
3109     </div>
3110     <div class="padding"></div>
3111
3112     <div class="entry">
3113       <div class="title">
3114         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
3115       </div>
3116       <div class="date">
3117         24th October 2010
3118       </div>
3119       <div class="body">
3120         <p>Some updates.</p>
3121
3122 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
3123 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
3124 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
3125 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
3126 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
3127 :)</p>
3128
3129 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
3130 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
3131 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
3132 It is called
3133 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
3134 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
3135 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
3136 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
3137 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
3138 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
3139
3140 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
3141 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
3142 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
3143 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
3144 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
3145 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
3146 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
3147 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
3148 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
3149 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
3150
3151       </div>
3152       <div class="tags">
3153
3154
3155         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>.
3156
3157
3158       </div>
3159     </div>
3160     <div class="padding"></div>
3161
3162     <div class="entry">
3163       <div class="title">
3164         <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>
3165       </div>
3166       <div class="date">
3167          4th September 2010
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="body">
3170         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
3171 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
3172 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
3173 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
3174 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
3175 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
3176 installed.</p>
3177
3178 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
3179 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
3180 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
3181 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
3182 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3183 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
3184 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
3185 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
3186 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
3187
3188 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
3189 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
3190 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
3191 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
3192 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
3193 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
3194 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
3195 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
3196 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
3197 pages they want to visit.</p>
3198
3199 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
3200 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
3201 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
3202 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
3203 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
3204 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
3205 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
3206 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
3207 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
3208 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
3209 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
3210
3211       </div>
3212       <div class="tags">
3213
3214
3215         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>.
3216
3217
3218       </div>
3219     </div>
3220     <div class="padding"></div>
3221
3222     <div class="entry">
3223       <div class="title">
3224         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
3225       </div>
3226       <div class="date">
3227         27th July 2010
3228       </div>
3229       <div class="body">
3230         <p>I discovered this while doing
3231 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
3232 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
3233 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
3234 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
3235 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
3236
3237 <p>An example is from todays
3238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
3239 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
3240 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
3241 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
3242 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
3243 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
3244 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
3245
3246 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
3247
3248 <blockquote><pre>
3249 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
3250  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
3251   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
3252 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
3253  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
3254 </pre></blockquote>
3255
3256 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
3257 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
3258 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
3259 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
3260 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
3261 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
3262 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
3263 of dependency loops.</p>
3264
3265 <p>Thanks to
3266 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
3267 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
3268 dependencies
3269 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
3270 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
3271
3272 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
3273 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
3274 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
3275 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
3276 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
3277 it.</p>
3278
3279       </div>
3280       <div class="tags">
3281
3282
3283         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>.
3284
3285
3286       </div>
3287     </div>
3288     <div class="padding"></div>
3289
3290     <div class="entry">
3291       <div class="title">
3292         <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>
3293       </div>
3294       <div class="date">
3295         17th July 2010
3296       </div>
3297       <div class="body">
3298         <p>This is a
3299 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
3300 on my
3301 <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
3302 work</a> on
3303 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
3304 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
3305
3306 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
3307 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
3308 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
3309 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
3310
3311 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
3312 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
3313 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
3314
3315 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
3316
3317 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
3318 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
3319 the web.
3320
3321 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
3322 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
3323 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
3324 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
3325 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
3326 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
3327
3328 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
3329 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
3330 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
3331 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
3332 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
3333 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
3334 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
3335 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
3336 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
3337 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
3338 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
3339 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
3340 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
3341 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
3342 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
3343 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
3344
3345 <blockquote><pre>
3346 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3347   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3348   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3349   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3350   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3351   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3352   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3353
3354 ldapsearch -h ldap \
3355   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
3356   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
3357   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
3358   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
3359   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
3360 </pre></blockquote>
3361
3362 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
3363 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
3364 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
3365 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3366 also exist.</p>
3367
3368 <blockquote><pre>
3369 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3370 objectclass: top
3371 objectclass: dnsdomain
3372 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3373 dc: tjener
3374 arecord: 10.0.2.2
3375 associateddomain: tjener.intern
3376
3377 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3378 objectclass: top
3379 objectclass: dnsdomain2
3380 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3381 dc: 2
3382 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
3383 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
3384 </pre></blockquote>
3385
3386 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
3387 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
3388 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
3389 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
3390 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
3391 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
3392 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
3393 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
3394 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
3395 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
3396 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
3397 instead.</p>
3398
3399 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
3400 like this:</p>
3401
3402 <blockquote><pre>
3403 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3404   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
3405   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
3406   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
3407   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
3408   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
3409
3410 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
3411   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
3412 </pre></blockquote>
3413
3414 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
3415 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
3416 reverse lookups.</p>
3417
3418 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
3419 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
3420 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
3421 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
3422
3423 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
3424 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
3425 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
3426
3427 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
3428 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
3429 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
3430 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
3431 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
3432
3433 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
3434 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
3435 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
3436 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
3437 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
3438
3439 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
3440 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
3441 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
3442 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
3443 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
3444 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
3445
3446 <blockquote><pre>
3447 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
3448     SUP top
3449     AUXILIARY
3450     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
3451           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
3452           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
3453           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
3454           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
3455     ))
3456 </pre></blockquote>
3457
3458 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
3459 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
3460 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
3461 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
3462 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
3463 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
3464
3465 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
3466
3467 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
3468 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
3469 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
3470 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
3471 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
3472
3473 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
3474 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
3475 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
3476 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
3477
3478 <blockquote><pre>
3479 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
3480 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
3481 </pre></blockquote>
3482
3483 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
3484 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
3485 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
3486 search result is this entry:</p>
3487
3488 <blockquote><pre>
3489 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3490 cn: dhcp
3491 objectClass: top
3492 objectClass: dhcpServer
3493 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3494 </pre></blockquote>
3495
3496 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
3497 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
3498 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
3499 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
3500 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
3501 The search result is this entry:</p>
3502
3503 <blockquote><pre>
3504 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3505 cn: DHCP Config
3506 objectClass: top
3507 objectClass: dhcpService
3508 objectClass: dhcpOptions
3509 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3510 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
3511 dhcpStatements: authoritative
3512 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
3513 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
3514 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
3515 </pre></blockquote>
3516
3517 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
3518 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
3519 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
3520 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
3521 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
3522 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
3523 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
3524 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
3525 related computer objects.</p>
3526
3527 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
3528 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
3529 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
3530 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
3531 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
3532 like:</p>
3533
3534 <blockquote><pre>
3535 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3536 cn: hostname
3537 objectClass: top
3538 objectClass: dhcpHost
3539 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3540 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
3541 </pre></blockquote>
3542
3543 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
3544 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
3545 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
3546 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
3547 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
3548 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
3549 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
3550 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
3551 structural object class.
3552
3553 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
3554
3555 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
3556 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
3557 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
3558 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
3559 in the configuration.</p>
3560
3561 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
3562 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
3563 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
3564 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
3565 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
3566 structure.</p>
3567
3568 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
3569 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
3570
3571 <blockquote><pre>
3572 ou=services
3573   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
3574     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
3575     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3576       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3577         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3578     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
3579       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
3580         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
3581     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
3582       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
3583 </pre></blockquote>
3584
3585 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
3586 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
3587 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
3588 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
3589
3590 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
3591 like this:</p>
3592
3593 <blockquote><pre>
3594 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3595 dc: hostname
3596 objectClass: top
3597 objectClass: dhcpHost
3598 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3599 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
3600 associateddomain: hostname.intern
3601 arecord: 10.11.12.13
3602 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3603 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
3604 </pre></blockquote>
3605
3606 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
3607 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
3608 auxiliary object class.</p>
3609
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="tags">
3612
3613
3614         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>.
3615
3616
3617       </div>
3618     </div>
3619     <div class="padding"></div>
3620
3621     <div class="entry">
3622       <div class="title">
3623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
3624       </div>
3625       <div class="date">
3626         14th July 2010
3627       </div>
3628       <div class="body">
3629         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
3630 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
3631 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
3632 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
3633 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
3634
3635 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
3636 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
3637
3638 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
3639 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
3640 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
3641 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
3642 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
3643 to a slave DNS server.</p>
3644
3645 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
3646 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
3647 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
3648 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
3649 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
3650 seem to work.</p>
3651
3652 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
3653 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
3654 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
3655 this:</p>
3656
3657 <blockquote><pre>
3658   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
3659   cn: hostname
3660   objectClass: dhcphost
3661   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
3662   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
3663   associateddomain: hostname.intern
3664   arecord: 10.11.12.13
3665   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
3666   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
3667   ldapconfigsound: Y
3668 </pre></blockquote>
3669
3670 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
3671 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
3672 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
3673 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
3674
3675 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
3676 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
3677 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
3678 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
3679 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
3680 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
3681 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
3682 might be a good place to put it.</p>
3683
3684 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3685 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3686
3687       </div>
3688       <div class="tags">
3689
3690
3691         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>.
3692
3693
3694       </div>
3695     </div>
3696     <div class="padding"></div>
3697
3698     <div class="entry">
3699       <div class="title">
3700         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
3701       </div>
3702       <div class="date">
3703         11th July 2010
3704       </div>
3705       <div class="body">
3706         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
3707 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
3708 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
3709 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
3710
3711 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
3712 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
3713 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
3714 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
3715 LTSP clients.</p>
3716
3717 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
3718 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
3719 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
3720
3721 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
3722 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
3723 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
3724
3725 <blockquote><pre>
3726 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
3727 #
3728 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
3729 #
3730 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
3731 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
3732 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
3733 #
3734 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
3735 # existence of attribute names.
3736 #
3737 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
3738 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
3739 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
3740 #
3741 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
3742 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
3743 #
3744 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
3745 #     SUP top
3746 #     AUXILIARY
3747 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
3748
3749 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
3750 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
3751     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
3752     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
3753         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
3754         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
3755             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
3756             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
3757             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
3758             # bass value on to clients
3759             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
3760         done
3761     done
3762 fi
3763 </pre></blockquote>
3764
3765 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
3766 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
3767 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
3768 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
3769 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
3770
3771 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
3772 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3773
3774 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
3775 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
3776 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
3777 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
3778 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
3779 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
3780
3781       </div>
3782       <div class="tags">
3783
3784
3785         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>.
3786
3787
3788       </div>
3789     </div>
3790     <div class="padding"></div>
3791
3792     <div class="entry">
3793       <div class="title">
3794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
3795       </div>
3796       <div class="date">
3797          9th July 2010
3798       </div>
3799       <div class="body">
3800         <p>Since
3801 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
3802 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
3803 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
3804 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
3805 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
3806 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
3807 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
3808 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
3809 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
3810 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
3811 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
3812 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
3813 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
3814
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="tags">
3817
3818
3819         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>.
3820
3821
3822       </div>
3823     </div>
3824     <div class="padding"></div>
3825
3826     <div class="entry">
3827       <div class="title">
3828         <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>
3829       </div>
3830       <div class="date">
3831          3rd July 2010
3832       </div>
3833       <div class="body">
3834         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
3835 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
3836 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
3837 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
3838 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
3839 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
3840 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
3841 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
3842
3843 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
3844 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
3845 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
3846 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
3847 publish the difference.</p>
3848
3849 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3850
3851 <blockquote><p>
3852   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3853   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
3854   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
3855   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3856   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
3857   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
3858   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
3859   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
3860 </p></blockquote>
3861
3862 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3863
3864 <blockquote><p>
3865   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
3866   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
3867   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
3868   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
3869   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
3870   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
3871   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3872   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3873   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3874   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
3875   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
3876   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
3877   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
3878   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
3879   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
3880   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3881   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
3882   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
3883   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
3884   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
3885 </p></blockquote>
3886
3887 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3888
3889 <blockquote><p>
3890   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
3891   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
3892   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
3893   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
3894   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
3895   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
3896   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
3897   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
3898   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
3899   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
3900   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
3901   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
3902   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
3903   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
3904   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
3905   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
3906   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
3907   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
3908   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
3909   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
3910   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
3911 </p></blockquote>
3912
3913 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3914
3915 <blockquote><p>
3916   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
3917   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
3918   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
3919 </p></blockquote>
3920
3921 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
3922 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
3923 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
3924 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
3925 the difference somewhat.
3926
3927       </div>
3928       <div class="tags">
3929
3930
3931         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>.
3932
3933
3934       </div>
3935     </div>
3936     <div class="padding"></div>
3937
3938     <div class="entry">
3939       <div class="title">
3940         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
3941       </div>
3942       <div class="date">
3943         28th June 2010
3944       </div>
3945       <div class="body">
3946         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
3947 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
3948 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
3949 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
3950 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
3951 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
3952 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
3953 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
3954 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
3955 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
3956
3957 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
3958 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
3959 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
3960 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
3961 released.</p>
3962
3963 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
3964 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
3965 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
3966 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
3967
3968 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
3969 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
3970
3971 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
3972 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
3973 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
3974 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
3975 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
3976
3977       </div>
3978       <div class="tags">
3979
3980
3981         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>.
3982
3983
3984       </div>
3985     </div>
3986     <div class="padding"></div>
3987
3988     <div class="entry">
3989       <div class="title">
3990         <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>
3991       </div>
3992       <div class="date">
3993         24th June 2010
3994       </div>
3995       <div class="body">
3996         <p>A while back, I
3997 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
3998 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
3999 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4000 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4001
4002 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4003 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4004 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4005 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4006
4007 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4008 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4009 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4010 Debian Edu.</p>
4011
4012 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4013 the
4014 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4015 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4016 available today from IETF.</p>
4017
4018 <pre>
4019 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4020 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4021 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4022  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4023         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4024         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4025 -       SUP top
4026 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4027         MUST cn
4028         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4029         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4030 </pre>
4031
4032 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4033 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4034 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4035
4036 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4037 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4038
4039       </div>
4040       <div class="tags">
4041
4042
4043         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>.
4044
4045
4046       </div>
4047     </div>
4048     <div class="padding"></div>
4049
4050     <div class="entry">
4051       <div class="title">
4052         <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>
4053       </div>
4054       <div class="date">
4055         16th June 2010
4056       </div>
4057       <div class="body">
4058         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4059 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4060 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4061 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4062 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4063 this:
4064
4065 <blockquote><pre>
4066 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4067 tasksel --new-install
4068 </pre></blockquote>
4069
4070 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4071 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4072 any output what so ever.
4073
4074 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4075 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4076 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4077 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4078 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4079 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4080 code like this:
4081
4082 <blockquote><pre>
4083 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4084 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
4085 $cmd
4086 </pre></blockquote>
4087
4088 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
4089 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
4090 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
4091 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
4092 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
4093 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
4094 installation.</p>
4095
4096 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
4097 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
4098 like this.</p>
4099
4100       </div>
4101       <div class="tags">
4102
4103
4104         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>.
4105
4106
4107       </div>
4108     </div>
4109     <div class="padding"></div>
4110
4111     <div class="entry">
4112       <div class="title">
4113         <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>
4114       </div>
4115       <div class="date">
4116         13th June 2010
4117       </div>
4118       <div class="body">
4119         <p>My
4120 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
4121 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
4122 finally made the upgrade logs available from
4123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
4124 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
4125 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
4126 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
4127
4128 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
4129 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
4130 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
4131 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
4132 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
4133 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
4134 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
4135 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
4136
4137 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
4138 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
4139 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
4140 too surprising.</p>
4141
4142 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
4143 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
4144 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
4145 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
4146 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
4147 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
4148 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
4149 continue.</p>
4150
4151 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
4152 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
4153   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
4154   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
4155   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
4156   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
4157   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
4158   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4159   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4160   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4161   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4162   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4163   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4164   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4165   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4166   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4167   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4168   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4169   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4170   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4171   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4172   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4173   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4174   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4175   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4176   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4177   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4178   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4179   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
4180   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
4181
4182 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
4183
4184 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
4185   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
4186   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
4187   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
4188   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4189   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
4190   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
4191   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
4192   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
4193   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
4194   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4195   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
4196   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4197   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
4198   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
4199   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
4200   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
4201   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
4202   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
4203   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
4204   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
4205   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
4206   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
4207   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
4208   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4209   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
4210   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
4211   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
4212   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
4213   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4214   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4215   zip</p>
4216
4217 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
4218
4219 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
4220   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
4221   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
4222   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
4223   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
4224   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
4225   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4226   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4227   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
4228   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
4229   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
4230   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
4231   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4232   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4233   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4234   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4235   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4236   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
4237   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
4238   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
4239   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
4240   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
4241   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
4242   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
4243   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
4244   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
4245   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
4246   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
4247
4248 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
4249 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
4250   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
4251   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
4252   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
4253   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
4254   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
4255   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
4256   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
4257   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
4258   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
4259   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
4260   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
4261   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
4262   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
4263   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
4264   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
4265   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
4266   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
4267   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
4268   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
4269   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
4270   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
4271   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
4272   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
4273   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
4274   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
4275   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
4276   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
4277   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
4278   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
4279   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
4280   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
4281   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
4282   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
4283   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
4284   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
4285   xulrunner-1.9</p>
4286
4287
4288       </div>
4289       <div class="tags">
4290
4291
4292         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>.
4293
4294
4295       </div>
4296     </div>
4297     <div class="padding"></div>
4298
4299     <div class="entry">
4300       <div class="title">
4301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
4302       </div>
4303       <div class="date">
4304         11th June 2010
4305       </div>
4306       <div class="body">
4307         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
4308 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
4309 have been discovered and reported in the process
4310 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
4311 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
4312 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
4313 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
4314 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
4315
4316 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
4317 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
4318 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
4319 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
4320 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
4321 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
4322
4323 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
4324 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
4325 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4326 is created.  The bug report
4327 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
4328 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
4329 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
4330 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
4331 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
4332 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
4333 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
4334 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
4335 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
4336 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
4337 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
4338 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
4339 Debian Squeeze.</p>
4340
4341 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
4342 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
4343 trick:</p>
4344
4345 <blockquote><pre>
4346 #!/bin/sh
4347 set -ex
4348
4349 if [ "$1" ] ; then
4350     desktop=$1
4351 else
4352     desktop=gnome
4353 fi
4354
4355 from=lenny
4356 to=squeeze
4357
4358 exec &lt; /dev/null
4359 unset LANG
4360 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
4361 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
4362 fuser -mv .
4363 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
4364 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4365 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
4366 #!/bin/sh
4367 exit 101
4368 EOF
4369 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
4370 exit_cleanup() {
4371     umount $tmpdir/proc
4372 }
4373 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
4374 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
4375 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
4376
4377 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
4378
4379 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
4380 # to return the correct answers.
4381 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
4382     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
4383
4384 # Include the desktop and laptop task
4385 for test in desktop laptop ; do
4386     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
4387 #!/bin/sh
4388 exit 2
4389 EOF
4390     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
4391 done
4392
4393 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4394 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
4395 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
4396 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
4397
4398 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
4399 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
4400 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
4401 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
4402 fuser -mv
4403 </pre></blockquote>
4404
4405 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
4406 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
4407 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
4408 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
4409 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
4410 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
4411
4412 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
4413 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
4414 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
4415 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
4416 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
4417 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
4418 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
4419
4420 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
4421 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
4422 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
4423 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
4424 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
4425 packages.</p>
4426
4427       </div>
4428       <div class="tags">
4429
4430
4431         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>.
4432
4433
4434       </div>
4435     </div>
4436     <div class="padding"></div>
4437
4438     <div class="entry">
4439       <div class="title">
4440         <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>
4441       </div>
4442       <div class="date">
4443          6th June 2010
4444       </div>
4445       <div class="body">
4446         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
4447 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
4448 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
4449 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
4450 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
4451 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
4452 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
4453
4454 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
4455 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
4456 COLUMNS):</p>
4457
4458 <blockquote><pre>
4459 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
4460 previous=N
4461 PREVLEVEL=
4462 RUNLEVEL=
4463 runlevel=S
4464 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
4465 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
4466 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
4467 </pre></blockquote>
4468
4469 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
4470 script.</p>
4471
4472 <blockquote><pre>
4473 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
4474 previous=N
4475 PREVLEVEL=N
4476 RUNLEVEL=S
4477 runlevel=S
4478 </pre></blockquote>
4479
4480 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
4481 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
4482 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
4483
4484 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
4485 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
4486 choice.</p>
4487
4488       </div>
4489       <div class="tags">
4490
4491
4492         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>.
4493
4494
4495       </div>
4496     </div>
4497     <div class="padding"></div>
4498
4499     <div class="entry">
4500       <div class="title">
4501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
4502       </div>
4503       <div class="date">
4504          6th June 2010
4505       </div>
4506       <div class="body">
4507         <p>Via the
4508 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
4509 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
4510 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
4511 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
4512 following the standards wars of today.</p>
4513
4514       </div>
4515       <div class="tags">
4516
4517
4518         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>.
4519
4520
4521       </div>
4522     </div>
4523     <div class="padding"></div>
4524
4525     <div class="entry">
4526       <div class="title">
4527         <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>
4528       </div>
4529       <div class="date">
4530          3rd June 2010
4531       </div>
4532       <div class="body">
4533         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
4534 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
4535 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
4536 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
4537 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
4538
4539 <blockquote><pre>
4540 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
4541   vendor                    count
4542   Dell Computer Corporation     1
4543     PowerEdge 1750              1
4544   IBM                           1
4545     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
4546   Intel                         2
4547   [no-dmi-info]                 3
4548 maintainer:~#
4549 </pre></blockquote>
4550
4551 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
4552 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
4553 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
4554 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
4555 option to list the individual machines.</p>
4556
4557 <p>A larger list is
4558 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
4559 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
4560 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
4561 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
4562 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
4563 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
4564 collector.</p>
4565
4566       </div>
4567       <div class="tags">
4568
4569
4570         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>.
4571
4572
4573       </div>
4574     </div>
4575     <div class="padding"></div>
4576
4577     <div class="entry">
4578       <div class="title">
4579         <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>
4580       </div>
4581       <div class="date">
4582          1st June 2010
4583       </div>
4584       <div class="body">
4585         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
4586 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
4587 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
4588 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
4589 wait.</p>
4590
4591 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
4592 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
4593 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
4594 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
4595 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
4596 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
4597
4598 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
4599 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
4600 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
4601 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
4602 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
4603 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
4604 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
4605 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
4606
4607 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
4608
4609       </div>
4610       <div class="tags">
4611
4612
4613         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>.
4614
4615
4616       </div>
4617     </div>
4618     <div class="padding"></div>
4619
4620     <div class="entry">
4621       <div class="title">
4622         <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>
4623       </div>
4624       <div class="date">
4625         27th May 2010
4626       </div>
4627       <div class="body">
4628         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
4629 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
4630 issues are known and should be solved:
4631
4632 <p><ul>
4633
4634 <li>The wicd package seen to
4635 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
4636 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
4637 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
4638 seem to be on the case.</li>
4639
4640 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
4641 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
4642 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
4643 maintainer is on the case.</li>
4644
4645 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
4646 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
4647 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
4648 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
4649 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
4650 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
4651 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
4652 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
4653
4654 </ul></p>
4655
4656 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
4657 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
4658 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
4659 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
4660
4661 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4662 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4663 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4664 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4665
4666 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
4667
4668       </div>
4669       <div class="tags">
4670
4671
4672         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>.
4673
4674
4675       </div>
4676     </div>
4677     <div class="padding"></div>
4678
4679     <div class="entry">
4680       <div class="title">
4681         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
4682       </div>
4683       <div class="date">
4684         22nd May 2010
4685       </div>
4686       <div class="body">
4687         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
4688 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
4689 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
4690 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
4691
4692 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
4693 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
4694 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
4695 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
4696 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
4697 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
4698 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
4699 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
4700 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
4701 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
4702 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
4703 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
4704 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
4705 going to work.</p>
4706
4707 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
4708 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
4709 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
4710 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
4711 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
4712 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
4713 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
4714 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
4715 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
4716 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
4717 Edu.</p>
4718
4719 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
4720 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
4721 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
4722 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
4723 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
4724 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
4725
4726 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
4727 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
4728
4729       </div>
4730       <div class="tags">
4731
4732
4733         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>.
4734
4735
4736       </div>
4737     </div>
4738     <div class="padding"></div>
4739
4740     <div class="entry">
4741       <div class="title">
4742         <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>
4743       </div>
4744       <div class="date">
4745         14th May 2010
4746       </div>
4747       <div class="body">
4748         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
4749 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
4750 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
4751 expected, if I am to believe the
4752 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4753 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
4754 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
4755 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
4756 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
4757 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
4758 version.</p>
4759
4760 More information about
4761 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4762 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
4763 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
4764 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
4765
4766 <blockquote><pre>
4767 CONCURRENCY=none
4768 </pre></blockquote>
4769
4770 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4771 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4772 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4773 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4774
4775       </div>
4776       <div class="tags">
4777
4778
4779         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>.
4780
4781
4782       </div>
4783     </div>
4784     <div class="padding"></div>
4785
4786     <div class="entry">
4787       <div class="title">
4788         <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>
4789       </div>
4790       <div class="date">
4791         14th May 2010
4792       </div>
4793       <div class="body">
4794         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
4795 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
4796 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
4797 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
4798 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
4799 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
4800 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
4801 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
4802
4803 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
4804 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
4805 this on the collector host:</p>
4806
4807 <blockquote><pre>
4808 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
4809 </pre></blockquote>
4810
4811 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
4812 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
4813
4814 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
4815 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
4816 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
4817 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
4818 written yet.</p>
4819
4820       </div>
4821       <div class="tags">
4822
4823
4824         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>.
4825
4826
4827       </div>
4828     </div>
4829     <div class="padding"></div>
4830
4831     <div class="entry">
4832       <div class="title">
4833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
4834       </div>
4835       <div class="date">
4836         13th May 2010
4837       </div>
4838       <div class="body">
4839         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
4840 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
4841 has been
4842 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
4843
4844 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
4845 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
4846 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
4847 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
4848 based boot system.  Tollef is
4849 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
4850 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
4851 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
4852 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
4853 at the moment do not.</p>
4854
4855 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
4856 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
4857 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
4858 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
4859 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
4860 way forward.</p>
4861
4862 <p>In the mean time, based on the
4863 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
4864 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
4865 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
4866 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
4867 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
4868 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
4869 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
4870 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
4871
4872       </div>
4873       <div class="tags">
4874
4875
4876         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>.
4877
4878
4879       </div>
4880     </div>
4881     <div class="padding"></div>
4882
4883     <div class="entry">
4884       <div class="title">
4885         <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>
4886       </div>
4887       <div class="date">
4888          6th May 2010
4889       </div>
4890       <div class="body">
4891         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
4892 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
4893 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
4894 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
4895 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
4896 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
4897 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
4898
4899 <blockquote><pre>
4900 CONCURRENCY=makefile
4901 </pre></blockquote>
4902
4903 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
4904 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
4905 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
4906 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
4907 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
4908 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
4909 make this happen.</p>
4910
4911 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
4912 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
4913 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
4914 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
4915 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
4916
4917 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
4918 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
4919 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
4920 fix the remaining issues.</p>
4921
4922 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
4923 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
4924 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
4925 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
4926
4927       </div>
4928       <div class="tags">
4929
4930
4931         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>.
4932
4933
4934       </div>
4935     </div>
4936     <div class="padding"></div>
4937
4938     <div class="entry">
4939       <div class="title">
4940         <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>
4941       </div>
4942       <div class="date">
4943         27th July 2009
4944       </div>
4945       <div class="body">
4946         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
4947 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
4948 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
4949 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
4950 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
4951 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
4952 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
4953
4954 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
4955 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
4956 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
4957
4958       </div>
4959       <div class="tags">
4960
4961
4962         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>.
4963
4964
4965       </div>
4966     </div>
4967     <div class="padding"></div>
4968
4969     <div class="entry">
4970       <div class="title">
4971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
4972       </div>
4973       <div class="date">
4974         22nd July 2009
4975       </div>
4976       <div class="body">
4977         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
4978 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
4979 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
4980 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
4981 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
4982 the package up to date.</p>
4983
4984 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
4985 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
4986 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
4987 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
4988 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
4989 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
4990 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
4991 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
4992 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
4993 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
4994 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
4995 working on the future release.</p>
4996
4997 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
4998 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
4999
5000       </div>
5001       <div class="tags">
5002
5003
5004         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>.
5005
5006
5007       </div>
5008     </div>
5009     <div class="padding"></div>
5010
5011     <div class="entry">
5012       <div class="title">
5013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5014       </div>
5015       <div class="date">
5016         24th June 2009
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="body">
5019         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5020 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5021 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5022 funded
5023 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5024 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5025 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5026 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5027 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5028 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5029
5030 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5031 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5032 boot:</p>
5033
5034 <ul>
5035
5036 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5037
5038 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5039    clock is in UTC.</li>
5040
5041 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5042    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5043    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5044
5045 </ul>
5046
5047 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5048 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5049 Villegas</a>.
5050
5051 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5052 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5053 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5054 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5055 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5056 using this.</p>
5057
5058 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5059 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5060 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5061 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5062 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5063 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5064 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5065
5066       </div>
5067       <div class="tags">
5068
5069
5070         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>.
5071
5072
5073       </div>
5074     </div>
5075     <div class="padding"></div>
5076
5077     <div class="entry">
5078       <div class="title">
5079         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5080       </div>
5081       <div class="date">
5082         17th May 2009
5083       </div>
5084       <div class="body">
5085         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
5086 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
5087 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
5088 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
5089 dager siden kom
5090 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
5091 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
5092 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
5093 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
5094 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
5095
5096 <blockquote>
5097 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
5098 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
5099 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
5100 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
5101 </blockquote>
5102
5103 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
5104 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
5105 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
5106 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
5107 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
5108
5109 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
5110 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
5111 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
5112
5113       </div>
5114       <div class="tags">
5115
5116
5117         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>.
5118
5119
5120       </div>
5121     </div>
5122     <div class="padding"></div>
5123
5124     <div class="entry">
5125       <div class="title">
5126         <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>
5127       </div>
5128       <div class="date">
5129          7th May 2009
5130       </div>
5131       <div class="body">
5132         <p>Kom over
5133 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
5134 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
5135 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
5136 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
5137 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
5138 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
5139 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
5140
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="tags">
5143
5144
5145         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>.
5146
5147
5148       </div>
5149     </div>
5150     <div class="padding"></div>
5151
5152     <div class="entry">
5153       <div class="title">
5154         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
5155       </div>
5156       <div class="date">
5157          2nd May 2009
5158       </div>
5159       <div class="body">
5160         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
5161 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
5162 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
5163 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
5164 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
5165 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
5166 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
5167 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
5168 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
5169 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
5170 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
5171 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
5172 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
5173 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
5174 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
5175 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
5176 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
5177 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
5178 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
5179 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
5180
5181 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
5182 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
5183 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
5184 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
5185 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
5186 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
5187 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
5188 betydelige.</p>
5189
5190       </div>
5191       <div class="tags">
5192
5193
5194         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>.
5195
5196
5197       </div>
5198     </div>
5199     <div class="padding"></div>
5200
5201     <div class="entry">
5202       <div class="title">
5203         <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>
5204       </div>
5205       <div class="date">
5206          2nd May 2009
5207       </div>
5208       <div class="body">
5209         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
5210 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
5211 do not yet know them.</p>
5212
5213 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
5214 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
5215 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
5216 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
5217 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
5218 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
5219 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
5220 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
5221 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
5222 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
5223 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
5224
5225 <p>The second one is
5226 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
5227 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
5228 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
5229 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
5230 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
5231 and the company behind it is running
5232 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
5233 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
5234 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
5235 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
5236 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
5237 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
5238 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
5239 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
5240
5241 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
5242 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
5243 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
5244 surrounded by today.</p>
5245
5246       </div>
5247       <div class="tags">
5248
5249
5250         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>.
5251
5252
5253       </div>
5254     </div>
5255     <div class="padding"></div>
5256
5257     <div class="entry">
5258       <div class="title">
5259         <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>
5260       </div>
5261       <div class="date">
5262         28th April 2009
5263       </div>
5264       <div class="body">
5265         <p>Julien Blache
5266 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
5267 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
5268 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
5269 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
5270 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
5271 properties.</p>
5272
5273       </div>
5274       <div class="tags">
5275
5276
5277         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>.
5278
5279
5280       </div>
5281     </div>
5282     <div class="padding"></div>
5283
5284     <div class="entry">
5285       <div class="title">
5286         <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>
5287       </div>
5288       <div class="date">
5289         30th March 2009
5290       </div>
5291       <div class="body">
5292         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
5293 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
5294 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
5295 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
5296 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
5297 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
5298 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
5299 application.</p>
5300
5301 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
5302 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
5303 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
5304 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
5305 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
5306 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
5307 blocked from doing so.</p>
5308
5309 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
5310 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
5311 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
5312 requirements change.</p>
5313
5314 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
5315 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
5316 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
5317
5318       </div>
5319       <div class="tags">
5320
5321
5322         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>.
5323
5324
5325       </div>
5326     </div>
5327     <div class="padding"></div>
5328
5329     <div class="entry">
5330       <div class="title">
5331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
5332       </div>
5333       <div class="date">
5334         29th March 2009
5335       </div>
5336       <div class="body">
5337         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
5338 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
5339 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
5340 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
5341 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
5342 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
5343 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
5344 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
5345 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
5346 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
5347 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
5348 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
5349 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
5350 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
5351 now. :)</p>
5352
5353       </div>
5354       <div class="tags">
5355
5356
5357         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>.
5358
5359
5360       </div>
5361     </div>
5362     <div class="padding"></div>
5363
5364     <div class="entry">
5365       <div class="title">
5366         <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>
5367       </div>
5368       <div class="date">
5369         29th March 2009
5370       </div>
5371       <div class="body">
5372         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
5373 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
5374 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
5375 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
5376 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
5377 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
5378
5379 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
5380 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
5381 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
5382 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
5383 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
5384 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
5385 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
5386 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
5387 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
5388 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
5389 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
5390 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
5391 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
5392
5393 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
5394 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
5395 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
5396 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
5397
5398 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
5399 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
5400
5401 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
5402 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
5403 new IETF work group?</p>
5404
5405       </div>
5406       <div class="tags">
5407
5408
5409         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>.
5410
5411
5412       </div>
5413     </div>
5414     <div class="padding"></div>
5415
5416     <div class="entry">
5417       <div class="title">
5418         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
5419       </div>
5420       <div class="date">
5421         15th February 2009
5422       </div>
5423       <div class="body">
5424         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
5425 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
5426 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
5427 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
5428 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
5429 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
5430 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
5431 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
5432 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
5433 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
5434 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
5435 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
5436
5437       </div>
5438       <div class="tags">
5439
5440
5441         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>.
5442
5443
5444       </div>
5445     </div>
5446     <div class="padding"></div>
5447
5448     <div class="entry">
5449       <div class="title">
5450         <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>
5451       </div>
5452       <div class="date">
5453          7th December 2008
5454       </div>
5455       <div class="body">
5456         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
5457 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
5458 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
5459 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
5460 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
5461 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
5462 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
5463 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
5464
5465 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
5466 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
5467 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
5468 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
5469 of these cards.</p>
5470
5471       </div>
5472       <div class="tags">
5473
5474
5475         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>.
5476
5477
5478       </div>
5479     </div>
5480     <div class="padding"></div>
5481
5482     <div class="entry">
5483       <div class="title">
5484         <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>
5485       </div>
5486       <div class="date">
5487         25th November 2008
5488       </div>
5489       <div class="body">
5490         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
5491 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
5492 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
5493 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
5494 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
5495 notes are available on
5496 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
5497 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
5498 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
5499 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
5500 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
5501 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
5502 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
5503 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
5504 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
5505
5506 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
5507 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
5508
5509       </div>
5510       <div class="tags">
5511
5512
5513         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>.
5514
5515
5516       </div>
5517     </div>
5518     <div class="padding"></div>
5519
5520     <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>
5521     <div id="sidebar">
5522
5523
5524
5525 <h2>Archive</h2>
5526 <ul>
5527
5528 <li>2013
5529 <ul>
5530
5531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
5532
5533 </ul></li>
5534
5535 <li>2012
5536 <ul>
5537
5538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
5539
5540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
5541
5542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
5543
5544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
5545
5546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
5547
5548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
5549
5550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
5551
5552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5553
5554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
5555
5556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
5557
5558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
5559
5560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5561
5562 </ul></li>
5563
5564 <li>2011
5565 <ul>
5566
5567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
5568
5569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
5570
5571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
5572
5573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
5574
5575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
5576
5577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
5578
5579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
5580
5581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
5582
5583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
5584
5585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5586
5587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5588
5589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
5590
5591 </ul></li>
5592
5593 <li>2010
5594 <ul>
5595
5596 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
5597
5598 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
5599
5600 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
5601
5602 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
5603
5604 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5605
5606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
5607
5608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
5609
5610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
5611
5612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
5613
5614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
5615
5616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
5617
5618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
5619
5620 </ul></li>
5621
5622 <li>2009
5623 <ul>
5624
5625 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
5626
5627 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
5628
5629 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
5630
5631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
5632
5633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
5634
5635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
5636
5637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
5638
5639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
5640
5641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
5642
5643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
5644
5645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
5646
5647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
5648
5649 </ul></li>
5650
5651 <li>2008
5652 <ul>
5653
5654 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
5655
5656 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
5657
5658 </ul></li>
5659
5660 </ul>
5661
5662
5663
5664 <h2>Tags</h2>
5665 <ul>
5666
5667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
5668
5669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
5670
5671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
5672
5673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
5674
5675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (5)</a></li>
5676
5677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
5678
5679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
5680
5681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (69)</a></li>
5682
5683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
5684
5685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
5686
5687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
5688
5689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
5690
5691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (175)</a></li>
5692
5693  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
5694
5695  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
5696
5697  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
5698
5699  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
5700
5701  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
5702
5703  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
5704
5705  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
5706
5707  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
5708
5709  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
5710
5711  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
5712
5713  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (219)</a></li>
5714
5715  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
5716
5717  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
5718
5719  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
5720
5721  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
5722
5723  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (61)</a></li>
5724
5725  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
5726
5727  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
5728
5729  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
5730
5731  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
5732
5733  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
5734
5735  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
5736
5737  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
5738
5739  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
5740
5741  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
5742
5743  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
5744
5745  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
5746
5747  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
5748
5749  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
5750
5751  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
5752
5753  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
5754
5755  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
5756
5757  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
5758
5759  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
5760
5761  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
5762
5763 </ul>
5764
5765
5766     </div>
5767     <p style="text-align: right">
5768  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
5769 </p>
5770
5771   </body>
5772 </html>